Railway container traffic in Russia grew by 16.5% year-on-year up to 5.8 mn TEU during 2020, FESCO President Arkady Korostelev said speaking at the conference Development of cargo transportation in modern reality during TransRussia 2021 international exhibition in Moscow.
He cited the increasing share of the Russian Far East in foreign trade structure, the growing Asia – Europe – Asia transit traffic and the expanding containerization in Russia as the main market drivers.
At the start of 2021, freight rates on the Asia – Europe trade surged more than 2.5-fold, which lead to container traffic shifting to other routes, as a result, the share of the Russian Far East in export container traffic increased 9-fold, Korostelev said.
Asia – Europe – Asia transit via Russia grew by 52% amounting to 750 thousand TEU.
The level of containerization across the Russian Railways network was up 10% during 2020, with non-ferrous metals demonstrating the highest containerization coefficient growth. Reefer container traffic was up 10% year-on-year to 70 thousand TEU.
FESCO carried 20% more cargo in 2020 than in 2019, the Group’s Commercial Port of Vladivostok handled 13% more containers than in 2019.
According to Korostelev, during Q1 2021 the transit container traffic from Japan, Republic of Korea, China and Europe via Vladivostok exceeded 1.5 thousand TEU, level with the entire traffic handled during 2019.