Russia Container Market 2008: Record-Breaking Figures, Fantastic Facts, Intriguing Developments

News was prepared under the information support of Online Daily Newspaper on Hellenic and international Shipping "Hellenic Shipping News".

28 Feb 2009

In 2008 Russia’s sea ports handled slightly less than 3.5 mn TEU of export, import and transit containers. The year-on-year growth is slightly over 12%. In 2007, the country’s foreign trade containerized turnover via sea ports amounted to 3.028 mn TEU, 27% above the result of 2006. The year 2008 was a year of record breaking reports. For the first time a terminal operator in Russia posted a 1,000,000-TEU throughput. Back in 2005, the Big port of St. Petersburg’s operators jointly handled 1 mn TEU. Last year, First Container Terminal alone handled this volume.
St. Petersburg’s second largest container terminal Petrolesport for the first time in its history handled over 500,000 TEU. This means two St. Petersburg operators together handled almost a half of Russia’s entire containerized traffic.
During 2008, Petrolesport was demonstrating record-breaking growth, sometimes exceeding previous year’s monthly volumes by 100% and more. The banking sector could only dream about such results.
And it was the banking sector, generally believed to be at fault for the global crisis that put an end to this growth. The Q4 statistics bear witness to that.
Russian container industry development analysis, market trends, future forecasts and traditionally exact statistics are to be found in the annual ‘Russian Container Market. 2008’ report by SeaNews.

Source: SeaNews