Import containers are waiting for wheels
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Container operators are asking the government to take into account the importance of their transportation, which in 2021 accounted for 80% of railway imports in price terms, when allocating the capacities of the Eastern Range. According to the participants, it is necessary to solve the problem of transporting empty platforms to the packed ports of the Far East. Russian Railways, however, does not consider the supply of empty platforms as a way out and proposes to increase the loaded mileage and solve the problem by loading containers into gondola cars.
On November 8, the Eurasian Union of Rail Transport Participants (ESU, unites the largest container operators) sent a letter to Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. The document (“Kommersant saw it”), citing a study by the Center for Infrastructure Economics and the Center for Strategic Research, reports that by the end of 2021, the share of containerized cargo in Russia’s total imports by rail was about 80%. More than half of the volume of imported containerized cargo was machinery and equipment ($54.4 billion), electrical machinery and equipment ($36.8 billion), ground transport ($27.5 billion). The departure of foreign container lines from the ports of the North-West, the blocking of other western transport corridors and the replacement of part of European imports by Chinese led to the redirection of logistics towards the Far East, which increased the load on the Eastern polygon.
The ESP notes that in the current situation it is important to solve the problem of supplying empty platforms to the ports of the Far Eastern Basin in order to promptly remove containers with imported products.
As the executive director of the ESP Sergey Avseykov explained to Kommersant, the union does not ask for any subsidies or benefits from Russian Railways. “Containerized cargo is not only high value-added cargo, whose contribution to the formation of the budget and the country’s economy is very high, but also goods for production, for each family,” he says. “Historically, imports have always prevailed over exports in the direction of the Far East . This year the imbalance has increased. There are technical restrictions on the supply of empty and loaded fitting platforms in the direction of the Far East, which is associated with a shortage of capacity.”
Although now, according to the temporary queuing rules at the Eastern Range, container trains already have priority over coal, this is not enough, Sergey Avseykov emphasizes, just as there are not enough benefits for the transportation of containers in gondola cars (the discount is 20.7%, for more details see below). “Kommersant” dated September 28).
Now the ports of the Far East are 100% loaded, and additional measures are needed to remove the import containers that have accumulated since the end of August.
In early October, Alexei Shilo, Deputy General Director of Russian Railways, said that the company had already increased the transportation of containers to the Far East by 27.7%, which creates a reserve for the export of imported goods from the ports of the region. According to him, in order to qualitatively change the situation, seven more container trains per day to the Far East are needed. But this means the need to “queue up” seven trains with other cargo. An alternative is the export of containers in gondola cars: now, said Mr. Shilo in an interview with Kommersant On October 31, Russian Railways reaches the rate of sending one or two container trains in gondola cars per day.
As Vedomosti wrote, the Delo group proposes to allow operators to send up to 15% of empty platforms with export container trains without approval. But, Mr. Shilo noted, JSC Russian Railways “categorically refuses to drive empty platforms past the cargo.” The monopoly shares the interests of the majority of shippers in maximizing the volume of transportation of goods, not empty cars, they explain there.
“In order to supply an additional train with empty platforms to the port, one loaded train will have to be canceled, which means that suppliers of coal, metals, timber and other goods will be denied transportation,” the company notes.
JSC Russian Railways is already organizing the driving of connected container trains (in October, at least nine twin trains with containers per day were running in the most “narrow” places of the Eastern range), they say in JSC Russian Railways, recalling that by the end of the year they will expand the carrying capacity of BAM and Transsib from 144 up to 158 million tons, including for the passage of containerized cargo.
According to Mikhail Burmistrov, head of Infoline-Analytics, in the context of the aggravation of the problem of bottlenecks at the Eastern range, it is necessary to use all methods to increase the carrying capacity. In his opinion, sending fitting platforms as part of container trains does not increase the load on the infrastructure, and it should be used as widely as possible if there is confidence that this solution will reduce the workload of the terminals. Loading containers into gondola cars, advocated by Russian Railways, although it reduces empty mileage, is quite expensive (up to 20 thousand rubles per car), and it is not clear that in the current conditions it ensures an increase in carrying capacity at the Eastern range.
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