Chinese chemistry spilled in the port

In the Eastern direction, new difficulties arose with the transshipment of liquid dangerous goods. The owner of the port in Vladivostok, FESCO, has suspended their acceptance due to overpacked storage facilities. The problem is that Russian Railways requires solvents sourced from China to be repackaged to comply with Russian safety requirements, leading to delays. The recipients of the goods say that the situation threatens to disrupt production plans, including in the polymer packaging sector.

As it became known to Kommersant, FESCO (owns the Vladivostok Commercial Sea Port) has suspended the acceptance of dangerous goods. Applications for the transportation of containers with liquid dangerous goods in “barrels” and “Eurocubes” on sea routes to Vladivostok and further by rail in import and transit directions are temporarily not accepted, the company said in letters to shippers. Such cargoes include adhesives, solvents and paints.

FESCO (owns VMTP) declined to comment. Global Ports (which manages the Eastern Stevedoring Company, VSK, in Nakhodka) reported that VSK continues to handle dangerous goods in accordance with the regulations, including taking into account the requirements for acceptance and dispatch introduced in 2022.

A source familiar with the situation explained to Kommersant that historically liquid dangerous goods went through the ports of the North-West. Now these ports are not loaded, the minimum volumes go through Novorossiysk, so the entire load falls on the Far East. The storage areas in the ports of the Far East are full, and there are standards for the volume of storage that cannot be violated. Therefore, the interlocutor of Kommersant explains, the acceptance of liquid dangerous goods is suspended until the accumulated volumes are taken out.

This is not the first case of stopping the transshipment of chemical cargo in the East. At the end of the summer, their import through the ports of the Far East became much more complicated due to changes in the requirements of Russian Railways for the layout and fastening of such goods inside containers. For example, when transporting liquid dangerous goods in wagons or containers, the shipper is required to place at least 1% of empty containers in them. Then the volume of stuck goods on the market was estimated at thousands of tons.

Now, explains the interlocutor of “Kommersant” in the company that is the recipient of dangerous goods, the main problem is that there are no agreed uniform requirements for the packaging of dangerous goods with the Chinese side. “OJSC Russian Railways has made the technical specifications for packaging, but, given the inertia of transportation processes, many goods come with differences from these requirements. As a result, containers are delayed for additional strengthening of goods in them, which is accompanied by complete unloading, transport repacking and loading of goods back into the container,” he says. This process, Kommersant’s interlocutors note, takes almost a working day. The container must be opened, everything pulled out, repacked (for example, by removing Chinese pallets from the container and placing 200-liter drums on plank spacers) and loaded back. But after that, difficulties arise during unloading, since special grippers are needed to pull out such containers without pallets at the point of arrival, and they are far from being available everywhere.

The Union of Plastic Processors notes that dozens of containers with goods that Russian Railways decided to repack, worth millions of dollars, got stuck at a number of participants. “Cargoes have been standing since the beginning of autumn, and these are supply disruptions and disruption of production processes, including in the field of food polymer packaging,” said Petr Bazunov, head of the SPP.

The second point, according to him, is that China continues to pack goods according to their internal rules. To accustom a Chinese factory to treat loading as reverently as production is a very difficult task, says Mr. Bazunov. In his opinion, packaging standards should be the same for Russia and China, as was done with the EU. In particular, plank pallets (not plywood) require special processing and certification in China, and it may be necessary to agree on special conditions and uniform rules between countries, according to the CPP. Otherwise, they say, the process of adapting mutual trade between the countries will continue for several more years, during which reloading with additional reinforcement of cargo in containers, delays in transportation, and leakage of containers will continue.

Olga Mordyushenko