Russia’s export grain from the Omsk and Kurgan Regions bound for the South-East Asia countries is to be transshipped in Sabetta port on the Yamal Peninsula, Maxim Kulinko, deputy head of the Northern Sea Route Directorate – head of Rosatom’s Department for Development of NSR and Costal Territories, told IAA PortNews.
Grain is to be transported by the Irtysh and Ob rivers northward, to the Gulf of Ob, by river-going barges with further transshipment onto sea-going vessels in Sabetta port. “It is a pilot project with a very good economic outlook”, said the speaker.
It is logistic company Grain of Siberia that is to perform grain supplies.
Omsk Region Governor Aleksandr Burkov told about the new promising project on grain exports to Japan via Yamal at the meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Aleksey Gordeyev (Moscow, 29 July 2019). It is to be launched in the navigation season of 2020 (about 300,000 tonnes of pilot shipments) as part of the national project “International Cooperation and Export”.
As IAA PortNews learned from the experts of grain logistics and river transportation, grain produced in the Omsk and Kurgan Regions is currently exported via the ports of Vladivostok and Novorossiysk where it is delivered by railways. However, high railway tariffs make this route to be inefficient.
In this case, water transportation is economically more viable. Yet, construction of river-going barges is needed to arrange this new logistic route. The demand is preliminary estimated at about 90 units. Also, additional dredging will be required in the Gulf of Ob for arrangement of an off-shore transshipment facility.
Total volume of grain to be handled in Sabetta over a navigation season is estimated at about 1 million tonnes.
Related link:
First grain shipment via Sabetta port expected in July 2020 – RF Ministry of Agriculture >>>>