During January-August 2019 Russian Railways loaded 850.1 mn tons of cargo, down 1.1% year-on-year.
Coal loading declined by 1.3% down to 246 mn tons. Oil and products, Russian Railways’ second most important cargo in terms of volume, decreased by 1.7% down to 154.1 mn tons.
Construction cargo was down 1.3% to 84.1 mn tons, ferrous metals down 4.6% to 50.1 mn tons, industrial and forming materials down 1.4% to 23.5 mn tons, timber and logs down 6.1% to 29.3 mn tons, soda and chemicals down 1.1% to 17.5 mn tons. Grain loading dropped by 29.4% down to 12.6 mn tons.
Ferrous metal scrap declined by 0.5% down to 10 mn tons, non-ferrous ore and raw sulphur by 3.3% down to 1.1 mn tons, coke down 0.9% to 7.2 mn tons.
Other commodities loading grew. Thus, ferrous and manganese ore was up 2.9% to 79.6 mn tons, chemicals and mineral fertilizers up 2.7% to 40.6 mn tons, cement up 5.7% to 18.2 mn tons.
In August, Russian Railways loaded 109 mn tons, up 0.2% year-on-year and up 0.8% month-on-month.
Cargo throughput in January-August 2019 made 1,734.1 bn ton/km, up 0.9% year-on-year.
In August cargo throughput decreased by 2.1% both year-on-year and month-on-month down to 271.2 bn ton/km.