Growing import and reduced export in road haulage market from Scandinavia to Russia

For the last few years road haulage market between Russia and Scandinavian region have shown strong trend of growing import to the Russian Federation while the export figures have been going down. The main chunk of freight turnover with Russia among Nordic countries belongs to Finland whose cargo flow in the 1st quarter of 2012 exceeded the volume of import from Sweden to Russia more than five times and the volume of export from Russian – more than 15 times, with the exception of crude oil export to the European Union through Sweden, according to Eurostat.

For the last three years there has been obvious growth of import to Russia from Finland from 344 000 tons in the 1st quarter of 2010 to 400 000 tons in the same period of time in 2012. Industrial products, chemicals, semi processed food and building materials have made the most significant increase in import. Less noticeable in terms of volume, steel products are also keeping with the trend. Nevertheless, agricultural products import that saw increase up to 25 000 tons in the 1st quarter of 2011 has gone down to 15 000 tons in 2012.

The figure of exported goods from Russia to Finland reached 614 000 tons in the first quarter of 2010. Since then, it has been decreasing and at the same period in 2011 it became 548 000 tons and a year later - 480 000 tons. The main groups of exported products are agricultural and industrial. Agricultural export volume has diminished to 200 000 tons in the 1st quarter of 2012 in comparison with 333 000 tons in 2010. The decline in export was primarily due to decrease in wood supply (according to Eurostat, wood is classified as an agricultural product) for paper production, raw wood used in sleeper’s production and timber waste. Industrial goods export has been also stable, though less rapid: from 258 000 tons in the 1st quarter of 2010 to 233 000 tons in the same period of 2011.  Against the overall decline in export, chemicals and metal products has seen a sound growth. Though, it did not have a significant effect on the overall trend.


Table 1. Road haulage from Finland to Russia in the first quarter of the year from 2010 to 2012 (Eurostat data)





Import to Russia, tons
Q1 2010
Q1 2011Q1 2012
Agricultural products
14 71224 86714 187
Semi processed food
35 099
36 578
42 684
Solid mineral fuel
21
41
75
Petrochemicals
27 985
23 669
26 079
Minerals and metal waste267
310
915
Metal production
5 503
7 064
8 468
Raw and industrial minerals, building materials
25 009
28 425
31 997
Fertilizers
0
19
1
Chemical products
88 006
85 062
95 499
Machinery, transport equipment, industrial products
112 571
138 915
141 063
Total
344 016
382 149
400 556




























Table 2. Road haulage from Russia to Finland in the first quarter of the year from 2010 to 2012 (Eurostat data)




  Export from Russia, tons

Q1 2010Q1 2011Q1 2012
Agricultural products332 965269 568200 241
Semi processed food3 2682 8822 803
Solid mineral fuel1 9825 4933 922
Petrochemicals3961 058616
Minerals and metal waste86846597
Metal production4 6336 53511 107
Raw and industrial minerals, building materials    2 5002 6814 663
Fertilizers0400
Chemical products9 67815 25123 096
Machinery, transport equipment, industrial products258 109244 324233 032
Total614 452548 593480 546