MASHPROMLEASING JSC is boosting its portfolio of shipbuilding projects. In his interview with IAA PortNews, Aleksandr Babich, General Director of MASHPROMLEASING JSC, tells about specific features of leasing for various types of ships, financing of PV300 cruise ship and prospects of the operational leasing.

Virtually all largest tanker operators worldwide, excluding Sovcomflot of Russia that had successfully diversified its business, demonstrated a loss in the first half of 2019. Meanwhile, both refineries and tanker fleet operators are preparing for environmental restrictions effective from 2020.

Russia continues intense development of its port infrastructure that implies a considerable scope of dredging works. Rosatom has joined the list of customers. Among the largest dredging projects are dry cargo area of Taman port, Utrenny terminal, port in Pionersky, port Lavna. The construction of a fleet of dredgers is underway in Russia.

Although some large ports worldwide impose bans on open loop scrubbers and closed ones feature high price and weight, global shipping industry continues equipping ships with scrubbers while scientists emphasize larger emissions of green house gases during the production of low sulfur fuel as compared with that of high sulfur content.

In recent years, Russia has been active in the Arctic. Belfracht is one of the shipping companies that has been operating in the region for a long time. The Belfreight press office told IAA PortNews about the shipping company’s activity, development plans, outlook for shipping along the Northern Sea Route and the problem of illegal ship breaking at yards in the Arkhangelsk region.

There is a complicated situation unfolding in the Russian part of the Gulf of Finland concerning marine border crossing rules: mooring of commercial vessels at some anchorage locations in the harbours of Primorsk and Ust-Luga appeared to be illegal. Border service officials reported several masters had been fined. Now to solve the problem it is to be micromanaged.

Several new port development projects have been announced recently in Russia. The projects successful implementation will likely help shift Russian exports flow, primarily bulk cargo, currently transshipped at foreign ports, to Russia’s harbours. This half-year results showed a 20-percent drop in Russian cargo transshipment through foreign ports, to 21.35 million tonnes.

We are used to talking about the low competitiveness of Russian shipyards. However, not everything is so simple abroad. Thus, one of the leading shipbuilding groups Royal IHC, specializing in innovative shipbuilding, does not seem to stand up to global competition being in a crisis situation, disrupting the delivery time of ships and increasing the cost of their construction.

Without normal flood on the Oka river, it has gone low and unnavigable that resulted in cancellation of voyages and some companies’ losses. Representatives of the shipping community blame the Moscow Canal for not performing dredging at the appropriate time while the Canal representatives say that the dredging is underway. The situation is aggravated by an incident in Tushino and suspension of works on the Beloomut hydraulic engineering system.

In the first half of 2019, Russia’s container market grew by 8.5% to 2.98 million TEUs. The industry experts say the growth can be as high as 9%, or 6.1 million TEUs, by the end of the year. However, certain macroeconomic and geopolitical conditions as well as development of outer ports on the Baltic Sea are required to ensure further stable growth.