In 2016, Black Sea container terminals of Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia and Bulgaria handled 2,460,028 TEUs, including empty containers and excluding transshipment.

Over the recent years, the Caspian Sea Basin of Russia has been showing a downward cargo transshipment trend while the throughput of other basins is permanently growing. The weakness of transcaspian logistics is in its customs administration, closeness of the Caspian Sea as well as poorly developed transport and logistic infrastructure.

Last year saw a trend towards shifting of grain cargoes from the ports of Russia’s neighbors to domestic harbours. Russia started exports to the Far East while the terminals in the Southern region experience increased competition. Meanwhile, rouble strengthening presents a risk for the market.

In view of prospective development of coal transshipment facilities in Russia there is a concern about environment protection which can be efficiently faced in the framework of dedicated coal terminals.

A number of projects requiring large scale dredging including that in the Arctic conditions have been announced in Russia. The participants of the 4th Forum of Dredging Companies discussed different urgent issues of dredging.

Coal is the second largest segment in Russian ports after crude and oil products. Its growth rates are kept high and there are prospects for further increase, not without certain risks, though.

In 2016, transshipment of Russia’s foreign trade cargo via the foreign ports of the Baltics and Ukraine decreased by a quarter to 47.2 mln t, which is 6.5% of the total throughput of Russian ports and 6.1% of Russian foreign trade cargo transshipped via seaports. However, Russia is still dependent on foreign Baltic terminals when it comes to certain types of cargo.

Caspian Pipeline Consortium has announced its intention to invest $150 mln in expansion of throughput by 1.5 times to 67 mln t in 2017 while reduction of oil output has been agreed internationally. Experts doubt the announced volumes to be pumped though this investment project is probably reasonable in the long-term run.

Over a year and a half, Makhachkala Commercial Sea Port (MCSP) with its quite moderate performance has seen media exposure and attention from authorities in the amount exceeding that of harbours handling tens of millions of tons. Yet, there is no paradox here: recent activities around MCSP put everything into perspective with quite uninviting prospects for Russia’s only nonfreezing port in the Caspian Sea.

The Russian Federation is losing its cruise river fleet. Lack of comfortable vessels is among the factors hindering the development of cruise tourism. Amid the market demand Russian shipbuilders are busting a decades-long myth about Russia not able to build passenger ships.