Vedomosti announced the departure from the Russian Federation of the main supplier of data on the railway market

Industrial Freight magazine will stop publishing in Russia from 2023, sources say Vedomosti. The decision was made by the Ukrainian publishing house “Metal Courier”. The magazine, by paid subscription, provided information on the rates of rolling stock operators and was a benchmark for the entire Russian railway market.

The publication Industrial Freight is legally published in Russia, but in fact it is Ukrainian. In particular, the publisher’s IP addresses and servers are located in Ukraine, Vedomosti claims. According to the newspaper, the publication grew out of the supply department of the Mariupol Azovstal. The plant was one of the largest manufacturers of rolling stock and components. The interlocutor of the newspaper explained that the data collected by the magazine were needed by operators, car repair companies, car building plants, they were also used in judicial practice.

According to Vedomosti, the topic of the publishing house’s departure became one of the main ones at a meeting with Roszheldor subordinate to the Ministry of Transport at the end of October. Until mid-November, the parties had to submit proposals on the possibility of providing data on the railway market. According to the newspaper, there are several contenders for the place of Industrial Freight, including Technologies of Trust – Consulting (formerly PwC in Russia), the Institute for Natural Monopoly Problems (IPEM), RZD-Partner magazine and Infoline-analytics agency.

As Kommersant reported in August, Russian Railways, including taking into account problems with Industrial Freight, proposed creating a unified pricing monitoring system at all links in the transport chain. The company, in particular, requested that wagon operators be required by law to provide it with information on rates.

More about the problem – in the material “Kommersant” “JSC Russian Railways collects valuable data”.

Leonid Uvarchev