Sea Port of Saint-Petersburg's H1 cargo volumes fell 5% to 3.6 million tonnes
JSC “Sea Port of Saint-Petersburg”, a UCL Holding's stevedore operating in the Big Port St. Petersburg reported a 5-percent decline in freight volumes handled in the first six month of the year to 3.6 million tonnes.
The terminals operator attributed the results to a 86-percent drop in suction and grab bulk segment to 75,300 tonnes. This was caused by the transfer of ore exports (over 10% of the stevedore's volume) to another operator of the UCL stevedoring division.
Half-year volume of mineral fertilizers plummeted by 69% to 8,700 tonnes as the commodity major volumes shifted to dedicated terminals of Russia and in the Baltic countries.
However, there was a 5-percent gain in general cargo throughput amounting to 3,4 million tonnes. Handling of ferrous metals increased by 35% to 2.07 million tonnes thanks to increased exports of Russian metallurgical enterprises. The volume of non-ferrous metals handled by Sea Port of St.Pb declined 5% to 738,000 tonnes due to a slight decline in aluminum exports. A 53-percent decline in scrap metal shipments to 195,000 tonnes was attributed to lower demand in importing countries, as well as to increased prices on the domestic market.
The stevedore said that thanks to the completion of Sea Port of St.Pb's indoor warehouse investment project transshipment of wood pellets in the reporting period leaped by 55% to 129,000 tonnes.
There was a dramatic growth in container throughput – to 11,000 TEUs (or 139,000 tonnes), which represents a three-fold increase. The positive result was due to additional services for handling and storage of containerized goods offered by the stevedore. Since December 2016 Sea Port of St.Pb has cooperated with Sea Connect, operator of Container Feeder and Short Sea services.
The remaining cargo segments demonstrated mixed changes in the reporting period following the prevailing environment in global commodity markets, the company said.
In the six-month period exports volume handled by the terminal operator rose by 8% to 3,4 million tonnes, while imports plummeted by more than three times to 200,000 tonnes. The share of exports in total throughput of the company was 95%, while imports accounted for 5%.
JSC “Sea Port of Saint-Petersburg” (part of UCL Port, a stevedoring division of the international transport group UCL Holding) is the largest terminal operator specializing in handling dry bulk cargo at the Big Port Saint-Petersburg (founded on the base of Leningrad Sea Commercial Port). The stevedore operates modern multipurpose terminals for general and bulk cargoes as well as Ro-Ro and container dedicated terminals.