BEIJING, April 2 (Xinhua) -- South China's Guangdong Province handled a growing number of China-Europe freight trains in the first quarter of this year, the CCTV.com reported recently.

According to the report, the number of China-Europe freight trains departing from Guangdong amounted to 80 in the first quarter of this year, up 135.3 percent year on year.

The province was expected to handle overall 340 China-Europe freight trains this year, an increase of 29.8 percent from the same period of last year.

On March 31, a China-Europe freight train loaded 50 containers departed from China's economic hub Shenzhen to Germany's Duisburg, marking the 80th trip made by such trains running between the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and other European and Asian cities this year.

It is worth noting that the demand of China-Europe freight train service further increased as cross-border e-commerce continued to flourish last year.

In March alone, the country saw an average of one freight train ran between the Greater Bay Area and other European and Asian cities per day. 

China-Europe freight trains, designed to boost land connectivity between China and the continent, have bucked the transport trend amid the COVID-19 epidemic thanks to their cost-effectiveness and reliability.