Major exporters join hands with RZD to find non-tariff solutions for the Eastern Polygon ‘bottlenecks’

Irina Olkhovskaya, Director, Port and Rail Projects, UMMC, announced her proposals

Joint efforts of the largest commodities exporters and Russian Railways are required to solve the problem of increasing throughput at the limiting sections of the RZD’s Eastern Polygon. Irina Olkhovskaya, Director for Port and Rail Projects of Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company (UMMC), noted that it is necessary, together with the main consignors and largest consignees, to work out non-tariff technological methods of ‘debottlenecking’ and carrying capacity of the railway limiting sections.

Ms Olkhovskaya offered as a solution, the transition as soon as possible to a 100% utilization of the fleet of innovative freight cars for the transportation of coal products to specialized and universal ports and the use of the automated inspection system installed at all technical stations.

The UMMC manager considers the most important measure to increase utilization of the innovative coal-laden cars without inspection according to the technical standards set by the car manufacturer. In addition, it is necessary to completely exclude repair of cars in seaports and at port rail yards, if this does not affect traffic safety. In this case, repair work must be carried out elsewhere of the destination points.

Irina Olkhovskaya says the use of the “Road-Port-Road” system without reference to the destination stations will allow market participants to expedite car turnaround and increase the efficiency of the rolling stock. Undoubtedly, this should be done in conjunction with the operators.

She also drew attention to the importance of compliance with technological standards in terms of operations with locomotives: coupling and uncoupling must be performed only within the technological time; technical inspection of cars to exclude their downtime at technical stations.

RZD press office previously has said that the loading of export coal to seaports-bound trains in January 2021 increased by a quarter, to 14.7 million tonnes. More than half of this volume was shipped to the seaports of the Far East - 8.3 million tonnes of coal (a 21% surge on January 2020).