Terminal “Bronka” in the port of St. Petersburg may again change the owner

Russia and Belarus are working on the issue of transferring the Bronka multifunctional marine transshipment complex (MMPC), which is part of the Big Port of St. Petersburg, to the ownership of the latter. This was announced on February 10 in an interview with RIA Novosti by the director of the second department of the CIS countries of the Russian Foreign Ministry Alexei Polishchuk.

He noted that now the countries are actively taking “joint measures to overcome transport and logistics restrictions.” He called the work on transshipment of a wide range of Belarusian export cargo “successful”. “The steps taken made it possible to significantly – many times – increase the volume of transit of Belarusian export cargoes through Russia,” Polishchuk emphasized.

In 2022, according to him, 3.5 million tons of Belarusian oil products were shipped through the seaports of Russia, almost 3 million tons of potash fertilizers were transported through the ports in Yeysk, Ust-Luga, Novorossiysk and the Astrakhan region, as well as transit by rail to China.

The interest of Belarusians in the capacities of the Bronka port arose after the start of the NWO in Ukraine in February 2022, the UK, the EU, the USA and a number of other countries imposed sanctions against Russia and Belarus. In particular, from February 1, 2022, Lithuania has limited the acceptance of trains with Belarusian potash fertilizers to the port of Klaipeda.

After that, Russia began receiving goods from Belarus through its own terminals in Russian ports. At the same time, it became clear that they would not be able to cope with the reception and processing of Belarusian cargo, including about 12 million tons of potash fertilizers per year, which used to go through the Baltic ports.

In May 2022, following a meeting between the presidents of Russia and Belarus, Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko, it was reported that the Russian authorities were ready to allocate a place for Belarus to build its own transshipment terminal near the port of Bronka, that is, in the area of ​​the St. Petersburg suburb of Lomonosov. Even earlier, in March, Putin instructed the governor of the Leningrad region, Alexander Drozdenko, to assist in the construction of terminals for transshipment of goods from Belarus.

In June last year, Lukashenka visited the Leningrad region to get acquainted with the construction of a new terminal near the Bronka port. Earlier, he spoke about the desire to complete construction by 2024. There was no information about the real parameters of the project and investments from the Belarusian colleagues yet.

Bronka is the only deep-water terminal of the port of St. Petersburg, which can receive vessels up to 347 m long, up to 50 m wide and up to 13 m draft. The terminal’s cargo handling capacity is 3.2 million tons per year. The terminal website states that plans for further development included an increase in container handling capacity to 1.9 million TEU (equivalent of a 20-foot container) per year, and ro-ro cargo to 200,000 units per year. And the implementation of projects for the development of railway and warehouse infrastructure should further increase the transshipment capacity to 25 million tons by 2025.

Polishchuk said in an interview that the design capacity of the terminal reaches 20.7 million tons of cargo.

The terminal was created on the basis of a public-private partnership (PPP) and put into operation in 2015. The volume of private investments, taking into account borrowed funds, amounted to about 25 billion rubles, 16.2 billion rubles were invested from the federal budget. (to the sea channel and road junction). The private investor and managing company of the terminal was a subsidiary of Dmitry Mikhalchenko’s Forum holding, Phoenix LLC. He owned 50% of the company. The other half was equally controlled by retired FSB general Nikolai Negodov and Lyudmila Murova.

In 2016, Mikhalchenko was accused of corruption offenses while building facilities for the FSO and arrested. In 2017, after the reorganization of Forum, he lost his stake in Phoenix, the company was transferred to Bronka Group LLC, owned by the entrepreneur’s former business partners.

After a series of litigations at the suit of the Prosecutor General’s Office, by decision of the Nikulinsky District Court of Moscow, 100% of Phoenix LLC was transferred to the state. According to investigators, Mikhalchenko and his partners systematically received budgetary funds from the implementation of government contracts, some of which went, among other things, to the construction of the Bronka terminal.

In early December 2021, the asset was transferred to the Federal Property Management Agency. And in February 2022, the Russian government issued an order to transfer 100% of the Bronka terminal to the Rostec state corporation, which was to take place within 12 months from the date of its publication. Since then, there have been no official reports on whether the terminal was handed over to the state corporation. From the SPARK-Interfax data, it follows that Rostec is the managing company of Phoenix LLC, but the data on the owners of the company are closed in accordance with the law 129-FZ “On state registration of legal entities and individual entrepreneurs.”

Vedomosti sent inquiries to Rostec, the Federal Property Management Agency and the Ministry of Transport.

The general director of Infoline-analytics Mikhail Burmistrov considers the plans to transfer the Bronka port to the Belarusian side “a purely political decision.” He believes that most likely there will be no real money deal – the terminal will either be transferred to management or sold for a symbolic amount. The decision is beneficial to both parties, Dmitry Baranov, a leading expert at Finam Management, believes. “The volume of transportation in this direction (north-west) has decreased, which has reduced the needs of Russian companies in port facilities,” he explained.

At the end of 2022, the cargo turnover of the Big Port of St. Petersburg decreased by 37.4% compared to 2021 and amounted to 38.8 million tons. The cargo turnover of Bronka last year fell to 1.4 million tons of cargo (-62 % year on year).

Independent industrial expert Maxim Shaposhnikov estimated the cost of building additional facilities in the port at 10-15 trillion rubles, and the volume of prospective transshipment at 12 million tons.