During January-March 2018, Russian Railways loaded 315.7 mn tons of cargo, up 3.5% year-on-year.
Coal was up 3.6% to 91.1 mn tons, construction cargo up 3 to 28.7 mn tons, ferrous and manganese ore up 2.5% to 27.2 mn tons, ferrous metals up 10.8% to 19.8 mn tons
Chemical and mineral fertilizers loading grew 6.5% to 15.3 mn tons, timber and logs grew 5.4% to 11.4 mn tons.
Industrial and forming materials loading increased 6.6% to 8.3 mn tons. Chemicals and soda volume grew 1.1% to 6.8mn tons.
Grain loading surged 42.1% year-on-year to 7.1 mn tons.
Other cargo categories demonstrated a decline. Oil and products, Russian Railways’ second most important cargo in terms of tonnage, were down 1.7% to 60.2 mn tons (in March, however, oil and products grew 10.1% up to 20.7 mn tons).
Non-ferrous ore and raw sulfur loading in January-March decreased 4.2% to 4.8 mn tons, ferrous metals scrap dropped 11.6% to 2.5 mn tons.
Cement loading was down 2.5% to 4.5 mn tons.
Coke loading made 2.7 mn tons, 1.1% below the previous year’s result.
In March 2018, Russian Railways loaded 112.4 mn tons of cargo, 3.1% above March 2017 and 12.5% above February 2018.