Russian Railways set to double east-bound container traffic in the near future, to 6.500 TEU a day
Russian Railways (RZD) to meet the demand for container transport in its Eastern operating domain, is developing in conjunction with Russia’s Ministry of Transport, conditions to increase by two-fold rail freight volume through the railway infrastructure expansion and creation of transport and logistics hubs, an IAA PortNews correspondent reports citing an RZD official.
The trend of container traffic across the RZD railway network in 2023 was as follows: a 13-percent gain at the end of September; a 20-percent growth at the end of October, with a 40-percent surge in average daily volume of containers bound for eastern destination points, to 3 200 TEUs. These figures were announced by Alexey Shilo Deputy General Director, RZD who was speaking at at the International Customs Forum (ITF-2023).
The Far Eastern ports were operating at 64% handling capacity as of early October, and their congestion is expected to hit 110% of projected capacity by January 2024, Alexey Shilo said.
He noted that 1.14 million TEU were exported through the Far Eastern ports in 2022, including 174 000 TEUs in gondola cars. The number of terminals loading containers onto gondola cars increased from 6 to 17 at 12 rail stations. “Now the main goal is to double container throughput,” Shilo said.
“We plan to increase the average daily rate of Far East port clearance to 6.500 TEUs. This will be done by creating conditions for departure of 25 container trains per day, including the construction of Kuzbass Transport & Logistics Center with an annual capacity of 300.000 TEUs by 2025. The hub is designed to transfer containers from gondola cars to container platforms. In addition, we plan to double the capacity to 600,000 tonnes of the Sibirsky Terminal, inaugurated in August this year, as well as arrange additional container train tracks by increasing the capacity of the Artyshta - Mezhdurechensk - Tayshet railway section. Works for access roads expansion have been completed," the RZD deputy head said.
To summarize, he said that the container traffic growth occurs against the backdrop of a general increase in loadings: the figure increased 0.6% (or 5.5 million tonnes) in recent nine months, to 926.8 million tonnes. Exports increased by 1.4% (+4.3 million tonnes), to 323.3 million tonnes, east-bound freight exports – by 8% (+8.3 million tonnes), to 114.4 million tonnes. Trade flows handled by railways between Russia and “main importing countries” increased by 49% in 2023. Freight traffic with China surged by 52% to 128.3 million tonnes, the RZD official added.
Rail traffic within the RZD Eastern operating domain was up 3.3% exceeding 275 million tonnes by the 2022 year-end results, the presentation at ITF 2023 delivered by Alexey Shilo. exports to the East hit 81 million tonnes, to the West – 76 million tonnes, with the East bound coal exports in 2022 edging up 0.5% to more than 101 million tonnes.