The highest decrease was registered in the Baltic Basin
In 2022, Container throughput of Russian seaports fell by 23%, year-on-year, to 4.3 million TEU, Albert Likholet, General Director of Global Ports Management LLC, said at the video conference of the expert club of the Eurasian Union of Rail Freight Traffic Participants (ESP) “Container Market 2023: new products in the new reality”.
According to the speaker, the share of the Baltic Basin in the total container throughput of seaports decreased from 44% to 24%, the share of the Far East Basin grew from 37% to 53% but could not offset the total decrease. Besides, Albert Likholet believes that capacity of container terminals in the Far East is close to the limit.
When speaking at the 16th forum Transport of Russia Albert Likholet said that container throughput of Russia’s Baltic terminals could recover by 2024.
The ports of the Far East faced the problem of containers congestion with the redirection of cargo flows eastwards. Therefore, in September, the Ministry of Transport and Russian Railways set up a rapid response centre to manage the forwarding of containers from port terminals in the Far East.
As Minister of Transport Vitaly Savelyev said in late November, the situation with the loading of port terminals in the Far East can be stabilized by increasing container transport rates for eastbound shipping in 2023 while simultaneously reducing the rates for shipments to the ports in the northwest. According to him, unloading can also be facilitated with more container trains send from the Far East ports.