Yury Tyamushkin: the port in the Muchke Bay can be developed further to annual throughput of 40 million ton

New coal terminal of Vanino port will be opened in the Muchke Bay in December 2019. Yury Tyamushkin, General Director of company VaninoTransUgol, tells IAA PortNews about specific features of this project.

- Mr Tyamushkin, your port intended for handling of 24 million ton will be put into operation in two phases. Could you please tell about investments made and about equipment ordered?

- We have invested about RUB 15 billion with overall investments to total RUB 34 billion. We have signed contracts for additional RUB 16 billion. They cover supply of technological equipment, two tugboats, etc.

As of today, we have completed an external railway infrastructure facilities, external power facilities, external motor ways. We expect new large facilities to be put into operation this year. All of them will be completed in 2019 with the terminal to be launched in December.

The first phase able to handle 12 million ton per year will include a railway station, a technological complex, berthing facilities, waste treatment facilities, internal networks, separate production facilities and a checkpoint. That is actually the entire port infrastructure.

- Could you please tell more about the port’s transshipment equipment

- This equipment was ordered from Takraf last year. The first batch of equipment is expected in October 2018 with all supplies to be completed by September 2019. So, from the end of spring 2019 we will be busy with assembling of transshipment equipment.

There will be two railcar dumpers for two units each, two stockhall reclaimers, one shiploading machine, covered galleries and transfer stations.

Together with designers and manufacturers of equipment we have studied operation of the most advanced coal terminals in Russia – Rosterminalugol, Daltransugol and   Vostochny Port. We have taken over the best of the recent technologies and introduced some improvements.

Moreover, we have studied the global trends in the industry including those of Qingdao, a port under construction in China. The capacity of the port’s first phase is 100 million ton of coal per year, with the second phase designed for another 100 million ton of coal.  So, the seaport’s annual capacity will be 200 million ton! That is a huge number of stackers, reclaimers, shiploaders and heaps of coal up to the horizon!

It should be noted that a billion ton of coal is carried every year from the north to the south of China by sea. This short-sea transportation is intended to prevent loading of railways.

- What does the Chinese experience give you? Have you managed to adopt their best practices?

- As it is known, coal is a bulk cargo reasonable to transport by large capacity bulkers. Chartering of large vessels is cheaper for cargo owners as enormous amount of cargo is carried at lower costs. When designing our terminal in the Muchke Bay we took into consideration vessel sizes of up to 168,000 ton in capacity.

It was clear for us that large vessels should be loaded very quickly. It is not a stacker or a reclaimer, but a shiploading machine that represents a time bottleneck in this case. Its speed depends in its turn on the speed of a reaclaimer supplying coal. Therefore,  high speed is needed to load a large vessel.

In China we saw shiploading machines with a capacity of up to 16,000 ton per hour. All the process line calculations there are based on the speed of a shiploading machine filling the ship hold, rather than on a railcar dumper like in Russian ports. Railcar dumpers at state-of-the-art coal terminals of Russia usually handle 3,500 ton per hour. The rest of equipment is synchronized with them. SUEK has upgraded its equipment at Daltransugol terminal to increase its performance to 4,500 ton per hour.

For our terminal, we have ordered a shiploading machine with a performance capacity of 6,000 ton per hour. It will take 12 hours to load a Panamax bulker with it.

- A vessel can tilt with such a speed

- There is a “reverse side of the coin”, indeed. In case of fast loading the issue of vessel ballasting, rolling and listing is essential. Ballast tanks can be used for a vessel levelling. Yet, the capacity of ballast pumps on some ships is lower as compared with the capacity of a shiploader. It should be a modern ship featuring high stability and equipped with efficient ballast pumps to keep up with pumping ballast water from side to side.

This specific approach should be taken into consideration.

- Is the depth at the port of Vanino enough for accommodating large capacity vessels?

- Out natural depth is good but dredging is needed anyway. FSUE Rosmorport has recently announced a dredging tender. The contract will be signed this year and preparatory works will begin immediately.

- You say there is a plan of creating your own port fleet

- Yes, we have signed a contract with DAMEN for supply of two tugboats in September 2019. These tugboats are under construction at Damen’s shipyard in China.

- I would like to ask you about cargo owners expected to export coal via your terminal. Will it be a monoport of Kolmar or can there be a place for other companies?

- Even today, there are quite many companies focused on cargo transshipment via our port. We have obtained about 5 applications from different coal companies willing to export coal via the Muchke Bay. In particular, the interest to our port was expressed by a business of Mongolia that does not have its own ports for coal exports.

However, it will certainly depend on Kolmar. If our “parent company” does not ensure full loading of our terminal the port will provide services to other clients.

At the Eastern Economic Forum, Kolmar management said they were going to export up to 40 million ton via the port of Vanino. Its our target. So, further development of the project is possible after the second phase is put into operation and the terminal handles the designed 24 million ton per year.

Interviewed by Nadezhda Malysheva.