“Vostochny Port” announces its readyness for winter operations. The Company has completed the major preparations of the port facilities, scheduled inspections and repairs, and laid in store the required amount of agents for the conveyor equipment and port territory treatment. As soon as the temperatures in the region settle below zero, the stevedore will shift to winter operations.
In the run up to the winter season, fast-moving doors were assembled at the entrance of the dumper building to maintain the desired room temperatures and prevent dusting. Car dumpers were subject to preventive maintenance, and crushing mills were pre-commissioned. Protection coating was renewed for the wind shields. 35 tons of bishofite – a natural mineral solution – were stocked up to protect the bulk materials fr om freezing in transportation and to ensure smooth operation of the conveyor belts. 25 cubic meters of environment-friendly agent – sand-and-salt mixture – were purchased for the deicing of the port territory.
Since the beginning of this year, the Coal Handling Complex has replaced 3.3 km of conveyor belts under the major repairs program to provide effective operations of the conveyors in winter season.
Note that the flow processes in the port change as soon as low temperatures settle. Beginning from October - at the first stage of transshipment - the wagons with coal are delivered to a modern drill-ripping machine, the only one in the Russian Far East, to divide the frozen coal into parts without any damage to the wagons. Then, the wagons go into defrosters wh ere the cargo that got frozen on its way to the port is quickly defrosted at technologically acceptable high temperatures.
Part of the coal trains way along the Coal Handling Complex is enclosed by wind shields of 600 meter total length, so that the coal does not freeze again in the strong Primorye wind while the wagons are delivered for unloading into the open car dumper facility. For a better effect, the wind shields are fitted with infrared emitters.
When the coal is poured into the underground galleries, the crushing mills finally break it into fractions requested by the consignees.
“40 years of experience help “Vostochny Port” to arrange facilities and processes, unrivaled in the Russian Far East, that ensures continuous fail-safe unloading operations in winter season. The coal freezes on its way in Siberia and Transbaikalia. So, when the cold season comes, we add up several stages to the loading and unloading operations in our port. This helps to return flowability to the coal within the shortest possible time and to achieve stable premium quality of the coal products and complete safety of the wagon fleet. What is most important is that this approach allows for almost zero negative environmental impact”, says Evgeny Arekhta, Chief Engineer of JSC “Vostochny Port”.
The water spraying system operation in the port coal stores is suspended with onset of the cold. Until the warm season comes back, the function of the protection dome for the coal piles will be performed by snowmaking plants.
Vgrangel, Primorsky Krai based Vostochny Port JSC is Russia's largest dedicated open access coal port using covered stations for unloading and transfer of coal, conveyor equipment, rotary car dumpers, shiploaders and the second-to-none system of multi-stage magnetic coal separation. The port handles coal mined and exported by Russian coal companies. In 2016 coal throughput at the terminal reached 23.5 million tonnes, a fifth of all coal exports from Russia's seaports and about 30% of coal transshipment in the ports of the Far Eastern basin.
Since the port construction completion 390 million tonnes of coal have been exported through the facility and 6.6 million rail cars have been handled, 28,000 vessels have been received at the port berths. Over the past ten years, JSC Vostochny Port has shipped more than 200 million tonnes of coal, an all-time record among all Russian coal ports.
Vostochny Port JSC is a free access terminal, open to all coal producers. The enterprise's main objective is the increase in coal throughput and the best quality of cargo handling services: ensuring an uninterrupted supply chain and loading the commodity to the most efficient types of vessels for the formation of new supply routes.
Vostochny Port JSC LLC is implementing an ambitious investment project on construction of the coal terminal’s Phase 3 including the construction of the federal railway infrastructure. New terminal facilities will be put into operation in 2017 allowing for port capacity to reach 39 mln t in 2019. The coal will be delivered from Kuzbass and other coal fields of Russia. A sole executive body of Vostochny Port JSC is Port Management Company LLC.
Port Management Company LLC is Russia's major coal port holding that exercises the powers of a single executive body of largest dedicated coal ports based in the Baltic Sea region (Rosterminalugol JSC, Ust-Luga, Leningrad Region) and in the Far East (Vostochny Port JSC, Wrangel Bay, Primorsky Territory).Total coal throughput by the 2016 year-end results of the holding's stevedoring companies reached 41.5 million tonnes, which is more than one third of all seaborne coal exports from Russia. The commodity is exported to more than 30 countries in Europe, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region. By 2019, according to PMC' estimates the total annual coal throughput across marine coal terminals will increase to 56.5 million tonnes.
The PMC LLC was founded in 2008. Since then coal volumes handled at Vostochny Port leaped by more than 60%, and in 2016 totaled 23.5 million tonnes. Between 2010 and 2017, the PMC Holding implemented a program of production optimization, handling equipment modernization and upgrade.
In 2016, another stevedoring company JSC Rosterminalugol became member of the PMC Holding. Following the 2016 year-end results coal volumes at Rosterminalugol terminal reached a record high of 18.1 million tonnes.
Dedicated coal ports of the holding, Vostochny Port and Rosterminalugol, are fitted with the cutting-edge equipment for closed transshipment of coal.
A specific feature of the holding’s activities is the search and introduction of the best technologies available to increase coal transshipment and improve environmental safety. The ports boast the world’s best equipment, unique import substitution technologies and self-engineered products.