In 2013, Black Sea container terminals of Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia and Bulgaria handled 2,636,998 TEUs including empty containers without transshipment. The highest growth in handling of loaded containers was demonstrated by Ukraine and Romania.

Ports of Ukraine and the Baltic states saw further decline of Russian cargoes last year. Their share in foreign trade turnover of Russia was 1.7 percentage points down to 13.3%. Ukraine can loose all of them in the nearest future.

Russian Railways OJSC has determined discounts and surcharges for infrastructure component of tariffs within the framework of price range. Port Ust-Luga, NOVATEK and container terminals in particular, are to benefit from them in 2014. Russian Railways has told IAA PortNews about discounts for certain cargoes and directions applied in 2014.

Konstantin Buryanov, Director General of Laky Verf LLC, tells IAA PortNews about new concept for yacht classification, development of aftersale services and the company’s results in 2013.

In 2013, Russian ports saw a slowdown in the growth rate of throughput. Cargo turnover was 3.9 pct up against 5.6-pct increase in 2012, which is “blamed” mainly on ferrous metal, grain and timber. However, metal and grain are likely to demonstrate more positive dynamics in 2014.

Global shipping remained challenging in the past year. Still low freight rates and expensive bunker force ship owners “tighten belts”. However, certain stabilization is seen now, fleet oversupply is decreasing but shipping companies are determined to continue cost minimization and apply innovative solutions.

In 2013, throughput capacity of Russian seaports surged by 30.5 mln t, cargo turnover is forecasted to climb by 4% to some 590 mln t. However, cargo flow at inland water ways dropped in the 11-month period by 5.5% to 133.2 mln t. Major problems of the industry are in the lack of specialized sea terminals, low water and “bottlenecks” at IWW.

Port Petrovsk LLC (Summa Group) has recently signed the Agreement of Intent with FSUE Makhachkala Commercial Seaport. Khuchbar Khuchbarov, Director General of Port Petrovsk, tells IAA PortNews about future relations between the private company and the state enterprise.

De-offshorisation campaign announced in Russia should take into account specific features of different industries. As for the international shipping, it is important to expand the fleet controlled by Russia and improve its competitiveness rather than “mindlessly” bring all vessels under the Russian flag.

Late last year we wrote about the port projects, existing only on paper. During the year nothing was added to the list, with some updates on the projects. We are talking about deep-water ports in Kaliningrad and Arkhangelsk, MTU, Pechora LNG, BELKOMUR and Stockman.