Beer brewed from plateau barley, mineral water from an altitude of 5,100 meters, dried yak meat and yogurt -- you don't have to travel to Tibet for the goods now that trains on the plateau have nearly halved production costs and shipped more Tibet's specific products to the rest of China.
"The railway has helped Tibet better integrate into the national market," said Yue Zhiqiang, managing director of the Tibet Lhasa Brewery Ltd. Co.
The 1,956-km railway running from Lhasa to Xining in the adjacent Qinghai Province has reduced costs for transportation and raw materials by at least 40 percent this year, said Norbu Cering, a senior executive of the company.
"This will cut our production costs by at least 3.4 million yuan (436,000 U.S. dollars)," he said. "Our sales will top 230 million yuan (30 million dollars) this year."
The company, in which Denmark's Brewer Carlsberg holds 50 percent of the shares, has shipped nearly 1,000 tons of beer by train to Beijing, Shanghai and at least five provinces in northeastern and central China since it began selling beer out of Tibet two months ago.
Its annual production for this year is estimated at 60,000 tons, of which 5,000 tons will be sold to other parts of China, said Norbu Cering.
By 2010, the company plans to sell one third, or 50,000 tons, of its annual production outside Tibet, he said.
The railway has also promoted a Tibetan mineral water brand across China, namely "5100 Tibetan glacier", meaning the water is fetched from a source 5,100 meters above sea level.
Railway transportation cost for each bottle of water is estimated at 0.4 yuan, down from one yuan by highway, said Fu Lin, president of Tibet Glacier Mineral Water Ltd.
The mineral water, although sold about five times the price of other brands at supermarkets in Beijing and Shanghai, makes up the bulk of the first container shipment out of Tibet by train early this month, said Fu.
Tibet's government said the region had saved 173 million yuan (22.8 million dollars) of transportation costs in the first 11 months since the operation of Qinghai-Tibet Railway in July last year.
The railway transported 591,000 tons of cargo between July 1 last year and May 30 this year, said Qiangba Puncog, chairman of the regional government.
Railway transportation was cheaper than highway by at least 50 percent, said the chairman, who reckoned that 293.4 yuan can be saved for every ton of cargo from Xining to Lhasa.