Although 9M’2021 throughput of Russian ports climbed by almost 2%, handling of Russia’s foreign trade cargo in the ports of Finland and the Baltic states decreased. Nevertheless, Russia loaded foreign terminals with more oil products, coal, grain and ferrous metal.

In almost 10 month of the year, cargo turnover on inland water ways of the Azov-Don Basin decreased by 1 million tonnes versus the same period of 2020. Transportation of agricultural goods and sulphur has reduced by almost a half with the decrease demonstrated by other types of cargo as well.

The third quarter of 2021 was marked by an energy crisis both in Europe and in China. No wonder it boosted exports of crude oil, oil products and coal from Russian ports.

ESG practices are getting increasingly crucial for companies including those in the water transport segment which can actually gain from it.

While Russia is developing projects on natural gas liquefaction, the world starts creating infrastructure for production, storage and transportation of hydrogen. Yet, experts forecast the gas era to last long enough. Moreover, leading gas exporters can start importing Russian LNG.

Russia has set itself a challenging task of ensuring domestic production of ship equipment since the dependence on products of foreign origin means the loss of added value. Perhaps, the most crucial segment is the one manufacturing ship engines, a heart of any self-propelled ship.

Passenger transportation by high-speed ships was very popular in soviet years. The only disadvantage was high cost of such transportation compared to that of land transport, twice as much or even three times in some cases. Unattractive price was among the factors behind gradual deterioration of the high-speed transportation segment. The other one was the fleet wear and obsolescence due to absence of modernization.

Construction of new civil ships was the main topic of the business programme at the NEVA 2021 exhibition held recently in Saint-Petersburg. The key task is to build ice class ships and ships of inland navigation with production arranged mostly in Russia and high content of locally manufactured equipment.

The second phase of providing investment quotas known as ‘keel quotas’ is being prepared in Russia. It is to cover the construction of 30 fishing ships of various types. Meanwhile, Rosrybolovstvo (Russian Federal Fisheries Agency) is against imposing any standard designs of ships hoping for development of domestic designs. Providing of the new fleet with repair facilities is a separate problem.

The Far East development is associated with exports to the booming economies of the Asia-Pacific Region and with transit. Meanwhile, a lot is to be done to ensure sustainable logistics: construction of icebreakers and ships of other types, modernization of sea terminals, expansion of the railway capacity.