Participants of the meeting headed by Roman Romanov, deputy head of Kerch administration, proposed to revive the idea of building a port and logistic complex in Tobechik district, press center of Kerch city council says. The project was supported by the representatives of Kerch fishing and commercial ports, Gosgidrografia, Zaliv shipyard, Kamysh-Burun seaport of Kerch and DP Tis-Krym.
Port business participants consider it to be reasonable to place a complex capable of taking part of Kerch ports’ load in Tobechik district as it is the closest to the city and has an access to the Black Sea.
Marine Multipurpose Complex Bronka (MMPK Bronka, Big Port St. Petersburg) has been visited by the students from Hamburg School of Business Administration. The delegation was headed by Prof. Dr. Jan Ninnemann, says Bronka project investor Fenix LLC. The visit organized by Natalia Kapkaeva, Port of Hamburg Marketing in Russia, was planned as an insight into the process of construction, environmental compliance, trends of container and ro-ro cargo handling in Saint-Petersburg, general trends of shipping.
The package of special environmental measures including baby fish release into the water bodies of the Leningrad Region attracted particular interest. The Marine Multipurpose Complex Bronka (MMPK Bronka) is being built on the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland, in the place where the dam and the ring road border the territory of Lomonosov. The Bronka Complex will comprise three specialized facilities: a container terminal encompassing 107 hectares, Ro-Ro terminal of 57 ha and logistics center of 42 ha. Container terminal will feature the 1.176 m-long waterfront (including 5 berths). The waterfront of rolling cargo terminal will be 630 meters (3 berths).
The Bronka Phase 1 capacity is projected to be 1.45 million TEUs and 260,000 units of Ro-Ro cargoes. The facility’s container throughput is planned to be increased to 1.9 million TEUs. The Bronka Multipurpose Complex will be able to handle Panamax containerships and the ferries of Finnstar class. Private investors are expected to inject nearly RUB 43.7 billion in the project with the Russian Government investment at some RUB 15.2 billion. Implementation of the Bronka project will bring 2,300 work places at sea terminals alone. Upon completion of the outer harbor facilities annual direct tax payments to the budget of St.
Petersburg will be at RUB 1.7 billion (plus indirect tax due to a multiplier effect – RUB 5.1 bn), the federal budget will get RUB 2.0 billion a year (RUB 5.9bn).
Freight turnover in September 2014 increased by 7.4% compared to the same month a year ago and amounted to 193 billion tariff ton-kilometres. Freight turnover taking into account empty wagon runs in September 2014 increased by 6.9% to 246.7 billion ton-kms.
According to the latest figures, loading in January-September 2014 was 913.2 million tons, 1.2% less than during the same period in 2013.
In January-September 2014, the railways shipped the following goods. Figures in brackets indicate the percentage change compared to January-September 2013:
coal – 229.6 m tons (+0.8%);
coke – 8.7 m tons (+1.9%);
petroleum and petroleum products – 190.6 m tons (+2.3%);
iron and manganese ores – 80.8 m tons (-2.3%);
ferrous metals – 53.3 m tons (+1.2%);
ferrous metal scrap – 12.2 m tons (-0.7%);
chemical and mineral fertilisers – 37.2 m tons (+7.1%);
cement – 25.8 m tons (-6%);
timber – 29.3 m tons (+8.5%);
grain and milled products – 11.8 m tons (+38.4%);
construction materials – 109.7 m tons (-17.4%);
non-ferrous ores and sulphur feedstock – 14.7 m tons (-6.3%);
chemicals and soda – 19 m tons (-3.1%);
industrial feedstock and moulded materials – 26.6 m tons (+4.9%).
Freight turnover since the beginning of 2014 amounted to 1,707.7 billion tariff ton-km, an increase of 5.7%. Freight turnover taking into account empty wagon runs was 2,197.9 billion ton-km, up 6.2%.
The gathered heads of rail companies and transportation agencies from around the world usually discuss the global challenges and trends in rail transport.
The main themes at this year’s summit were increasing mobility, developing information services and client applications and mutually integrating systems.
Alexander Dobrindt, Germany’s Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, noted in his welcoming speech that growing prosperity and mobility are inextricably linked with the flow of goods, passengers and information. The economic dynamism of any particular region depends on the increase of these flows. Rail transport accounts for a significant share of traffic today and therefore has a major impact on these flows and processes.
According to Rüdiger Grube, Chairman of the Board at Deutsche Bahn AG, it is true that today the global economy has moved into the digital era.
The summit’s participants agreed that due to increasing mobility and transportation and the improving performance of rolling stock, together with the reduced costs of maintain the infrastructure of traditional ticket sales channels, it is possible to lower the cost of travel and thus further increase the frequency of train journeys.
“Our goal is customer satisfaction, so we are focusing on improving customer focus,” said Vladimir Yakunin.
According to Yakunin, the interest in purchasing electronic tickets through the Internet is growing every year, as evidenced by an increase in sales by 1.5-2 times. Nowadays, every fourth ticket purchased by passengers is electronic.
Russia’s railway system began selling electronic tickets in 2007. Today, passengers can purchase tickets through the web portal of Russian Railways and the Company’s mobile app.
“We need to develop services that will meet the needs of our customers so that they enjoy buying tickets using a mobile phone,” said Vladimir Yakunin.
According to Rüdiger Grube, the first mobile app for the sale of train tickets was in 2009, but now in China alone, there are 1.5 million such apps. In Germany, 30% of all train tickets are sold through the Internet, while at 40% the figure is even higher in the high-speed train segment.
The participants in the summit also touched on the mutual integration of information systems used by different modes of transport and railways all over the world in order to improve the transparency and user friendliness of their services.
“As part of the work of the International Union of Railways, we are developing technologies and standards that can be mutually integrated in various countries and information systems,” said Vladimir Yakunin.
Vale had commissioned at least 35 VLOCs, as they are known in the shipping industry, to be built over the past decade by Asian shipbuilders, some Chinese.
The miner intended to cut its freight costs for shipping ore to China, the world’s largest producer of steel and consumer of iron ore, to better compete with rival Australian miners.
But until now, China has banned such large vessels that can carry more than 400,000 tonnes from entering its ports. Analysts expect the new deal between Vale and the Chinese shipbuilding industry to eventually facilitate the opening of mainland ports to receive ore from the VLOCs.
In the meantime Vale has pushed ahead with developing offloading projects in the Philippines and Malaysia, where ore is transferred from the large carriers on to smaller vessels before making the final leg to Chinese ports.
The VLOCs have successfully unloaded ore in Japanese, South Korean and European ports.
“We have asked the ports to carry out techno-economic feasibility studies for deepening the channel to 18m,” a shipping ministry spokesman said. The plan potentially creates a huge business opportunity for overseas dredging contractors because local firms lack capability to undertake such capital dredging projects
Last week, Jawaharlal Nehru port, India’s busiest container port, located near Mumbai decided to appoint a consultant to prepare a detailed project report (DPR) for deepening the channel to 18m from the existing 14m. Ennore Port has appointed Indian Ports Association (IPA) to write a DPR for the channel deepening work.
Indian dredging firms are mostly focused on maintenance dredging and the few Indian-flagged cutter suction dredgers in operation are not be able to do the job.
“Beyond a certain level of capability, you have to depend on big equipment which is not available with Indian companies today; they have to come from outside,” a dredging industry executive said.
Most of the Indian government-owned ports have a depth under 10m, except for a few ports that have depths of 14m. Only one port – Vizag – has a depth of 20m and that is in its outer harbour.
The depths at major ports are clearly inadequate to handle higher capacity ships such as capesize and container ships with a capacity to carry 14,000 standard containers that are increasingly being put to use worldwide.
Inadequate depths at India’s major ports entails extra time and costs for moving goods as a large proportion of cargos originating and bound for India are routed through transhipment ports such as Singapore and Colombo because of a lack of capable ports to handle bigger ships.
In January-August 2014, the port of Gdansk (Poland) handled 20389601 t of cargo (+5.7%, year-on-year), the stevedoring company says. Transshipment of grain climbed by 25.8% to 1037251 t, general cargo and timber – by 6% to 7429415 t, other bulk cargo (aggregates, sulphur, ore) – up 37.3% to 2502119 t, coal transshipment fell 1.5 times to 2115580 t, transshipment of liquid fuel increased by 15% to 7305236 t. The port of Gdansk is a major international transportation hub situated in the central part of the southern Baltic coast.
Besides handling bulk cargoes (oil, coal, metal ores) the port provides a number of line services linking it with the ports of the Baltic Sea and Western Europe (primarily ferry, construction and ro-ro lines). In 2013, the port handled 30259295 t of cargo.
It is the most important and biggest Lithuanian transport hub, connecting sea, land and railway routes from East to West. The port’s throughput (including Butinge terminal) made 33.42 mln t in 2013.
5%), non-ferrous metal – to 2.1 mln t (-19.6%). Transshipment of liquid bulk cargo hit 223.2 mln t (+1.0%) including 126.5 mln t of crude oil (-7.8%), 86.1 mln t of oil products (+15.1%) and 8.2 mln t of liquefied gas (+12.3%). Transshipment of export cargo totaled 328.4 mln t (+8.3%, year-on-year), import cargo – 29.2 mln t (-5.2%), transit cargo – 32.4 mln t (+4.6%), coastal trade cargo – 22.4 mln t (-1.3%). Operators of the Arctic Basin terminals handled 23.4 mln t of cargo (-24.9%) including 17.0 mln t of dry cargo (+3.7%) and 6.4 mln t of liquid bulk cargo (down 2.3 times).
The port of Murmansk handled 15.1 mln t (-26.2%), Arkhangelsk – 2.6 mln t (-19.8%), Varandei – 3.9 mln t (+10.4%). The ports of the Baltic Basin handled 149.8 mln t (+5.5%) including 59.0 mln t of dry cargo (+9.4%) and 90.8 mln t of liquid bulk cargo (+3.2%). The port of Ust-Luga handled 49.4 mln t (+22.3%), Big Port St. Petersburg – 41.0 mln t (+8.3%), Vysotsk – 12.1 mln t (+9.9%), Vyborg – 1.1 mln t (+24.5%), Kaliningrad – 9.0 mln t (-0.4%), Primorsk – 37.3 mln t (-12.4%). Throughput of Azov – Black Sea ports climbed to 125.6 mln t (+10.8%) including 46.2 mln t of dry cargo (+18.3%) and 79.4 mln t of liquid bulk cargo (+6.
8%). The port of Novorossiysk handled 81.4 mln t (+8.2%), Tuapse – 14.5 mln t (+31.7%), Taman – 6.8 mln t (+26.2%), Kavkaz – 6.2 mln t (+30.3%), Azov – 4.0 mln t (+22.3%), Yeisk – 2.4 mln t (+11.3%), Taganrog – 1.9 mln t (+4.1%), Rostov-on-Don – 6.8 mln t (+0.2%), Temryuk – 1.3 mln t (-4.0%). The ports of the Caspian Basin handled 5.2 mln t (-4.4%) including 2.2 mln t of dry cargo (+5.0%) and 3.0 mln t of liquid bulk cargo (-10.2%). Throughput of the port of Makhachkala fell by 7.0%, Olya – dropped by 7.7%, Astrakhan – increased by 1.8%. The ports of Far East Basin handled 108.4 mln t of cargo (+13.
2%) including 64.9 mln t of dry cargo (+17.4%), 43.5 mln t of liquid bulk cargo (+7.5%). Port Vostochny handled 38.1 mln t (+18.6%), Vanino – 17.2 mln t (+6.6%), Nakhodka – 14.2 mln t (+16.8%), Prigorodnoye – 10.9 mln t (+1.6%), Vladivostok – 10.5 mln t (+10.2%), De-Castri – 5.2 mln t (+16.3%), Posiet – 4.8 mln t (+30.5%). Association of Commercial Sea Ports (ASOP) set up in 1987 unites over 50 organizations and enterprises of Russia’s maritime transport. ASOP comprises commercial seaports, forwarding and agency companies, scientific research institutes and marine educational institutions. Operational results of Russian port sector are based on statistics reports and cover all stevedoring companies operating in the Russian Federation.
