Decathlon made a successful test of a new logistic system using a river boat in July, complementing its tests on a railroad link with its production sites in China, which began last November. A train carried 36 Decathlon containers from the Chinese province of Wuhan to Duisburg in Germany, where they were transferred to a boat to be shipped by river to the company's large Delta 3 distribution center at Dourges, France. The goods were previously transported from Germany to France with a different train or by truck, but the new solution turned out to be less costly, less likely to cause accidents and more environmental-friendly. Decathlon is working with Maersk and HXO to optimize shipments of products made by about 500 suppliers and five own factories in China as part of a project called “One Belt, One Road.” In the first eight months of this year, China's total exports by train and by road rose by 12 percent to the equivalent of about $776 billion, according to Xinhua.

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