Container Shipping Market of Russia and Ukraine Reveal Positive Tendencies

According to the Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine, Ukrainian container ports increased cargo handling by 29% in January-February 2016 against the same period of the previous year. In total, 454 thousand TEUs were handled over that period. (In 2015, the decrease of container transshipment at sea ports made 30%).

However, the transshipment of imported containers increased by 35% for the period under review (up to 210 thousand TEUs). Exports grew by 27% becoming almost equal to imports expressed in 20-feet units though exceeding imports in terms of weight (3.3 million tons of exports vs. 2.3 million tons of imports).

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The decline of container transshipment in the Russian Federation almost stopped. According to thе Association of Sea Commercial Ports of the Russian Federation, container transshipment decreased only by 0.5% over 9 months in the year 2016 against the same period of the previous year. (In 2015, there was a decline of 26%).

In total, 2940.1 thousand TEUs were handled at Russian sea ports over the period under review. The volume of imported containers increased by 0.2% (up to 1230.2 thousand TEUs) with 1216.5 thousand TEUs of export transshipments (-2.1%) and 34.9 thousand TEUs of transit transshipments (-37.6%).

Thus, the shares of exports and imports expressed in TEU are almost equal. At the same time, the number of empty export containers totaled 35.4% against 7.5% for imports. The major part of export empty containers are returned import containers (though their number decreased by 10.6% in the period under review).

The major volume of containers are transshipped at St. Petersburg’s ports, making 44.3% of the total container turnover of Russia (1302.8 thousand TEUs).

Figures for other ports: Novorossiysk – 455.8 thousand TEUs (15.5%). Vladivostok – 453.9 thousand TEUs (15.4%), Vostochny – 220.4 thousand TEUs (7.5%), Kaliningrad – 140.3 thousand TEUs (4.8%), Sakhalin’s ports – 90.5 thousand TEUs (3.1%).