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 2011	Q1 2012
Agricultural products	14 712	24 867	14 187
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 waste	267	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 2010	Q1 2011	Q1 2012
Agricultural products	332 965	269 568	200 241
Semi processed food	3 268	2 882	2 803
Solid mineral fuel	1 982	5 493	3 922
Petrochemicals	396	1 058	616
Minerals and metal waste	868	465	97
Metal production	4 633	6 535	11 107
Raw and industrial minerals, building materials	2 500	2 681	4 663
Fertilizers	0	40	0
Chemical products	9 678	15 251	23 096
Machinery, transport equipment, industrial products	258 109	244 324	233 032
Total	614 452	548 593	480 546