Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port Group handled 119.8 mn tons in January-October 2017, down 2.3% year-on-year.
Among the port where the group operates, only Primorsk saw its volume decrease (-8.6% down to 49.4 mn tons). Baltiysk was up both in terms of TEU (+64.8%) and tonnage-wise (+37.4%).
The terminal assets of NCSP in Novorossiysk (these include Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port proper, Importpischeprom / IPP, Novoroslesexport, Novorossiysk Shiprepair Yard / NSRZ and Novorossiysk Grain Terminal / NZT plus Novorossiysk Black Oil Terminal NMT, which is a joint venture between NCSP and Black Sea Mainline Pipelines) handled 69.5 mn tons, 2% more than during the 10 months of 2016.
Commodity-wise, only solid bulk and container segments demonstrated growth.
Liquid bulk, which accounts for 74.7 of the aggregate throughput, decreased 6.2% tp 89.4 mn tons. Crude traffic via Novorossiysk and Primorsk terminals was down 7.2% to 63.5 mn tons. Novorossiysk saw its crude volume decline 1.1% to 25.5 mn tons, while Primorsk lost 10.9% handling 38 mn tons.
Oil products traffic decreased 4.4% to 25.1 mn tons. In Novorossiysk, this commodity was down 8% to 13.7 mn tons, while Primorsk increased products throughput slightly by 0.3% to 11.4 mn tons.
Solid bulk throughput was up 35.7% to 13.6 mn tons, much due to the growth in grain and coal handling.
Despite some restrictions imposed on Russia’s grain export in Turkey, this country still rates the first among those importing Russian grain, and grain traffic via Russia’s deep water Black Sea ports including Novorossiysk is growing. In January-October 2017 NCSP handled 3.5 mn tons of grain cargo, up 64.1% year-on-year.
Growing demand in the global coal market has stimulated the export of this cargo via Russia’s sea ports. In NCSP, coal handling increased 15.6% to make 1.7 mn tons.
Other solid bulk cargoes decreased. Thus, chemicals were down 20.6% to 611 thousand tons, ferrous ore down 8.8% to 2.1 mn tons, raw sugar down 26% to 452 thousand tons.
General cargo traffic via NCSP decreased 6.4% year-on-year to 11.5 mn tons. The decline was due to lower volumes of ferrous metals and cast iron (-7.8% to 10 mn tons) and timber and logs (-31.1% to 336 thousand tons).
Other cargoes grew – non-ferrous metals were up 2.1% to 953 thousand tons, and perishables surged 6.9-fold to over 218 thousand tons.
Container traffic grew both in Novorossiysk and in Baltiysk.