NORTHEASTERN China's Heilongjiang province has started the first ISO standard container river shipping service to Russia's port of Khabarovsk via border checkpoint Tongjiang, Xinhua reports.

Before launch of the service, Heilongjiang-Russian shipping services had been using non-standard containers, which limited the transportation vehicles and venues of the service and hindered the smooth waterway logistics of the two places.

Heilongjiang's Tongjiang Port Authority has bought a 400,000-tonne container handling facility for the new service. While Russia's port of Khabarovsk has built up a container terminal and spare a part of the port as container yard. The service currently carries 10 containers on each sailing and will increase its capacity in the future.

With the new service, cargo can now be shipped in standard containers to port of Tongjiang and be loaded directly onto ships bound for Russia, dispensing with the need of reloading, helping to save more cost and reduce cargo damage.

Port of Tongjiang is the largest river port in Heilongjiang province. During the first half of this year, Tongjiang checkpoint recorded a cargo transportation volume of 92,000 tonnes and a trade cargo value of over US$700 million.