19 Ноября 2014

From:	John Keir, Ross Learmont Ltd
Email:	 john.keir@telia.com 
Date:	19 November 2014

The train in Spain travels mainly on the plain.

In the first ten months of the year, overall container traffic through Russian ports was down slightly by 0.6% to 4.42 million teu. However, the volume of laden export containers continues to reflect strong growth with a rise of over 20 percent to 764,800 teu. As a result, the number of empty export containers dropped by 9.5% to 1.15 million. We need to monitor the figures during the next quarter to see if this is simply a temporary blip, or if Russian industry is moving over from conventional rail wagons to containers in order to respond to the change in the country’s export patterns.

Between January and September, TransContainer transported just under one million teu (994,000). Imports were down by 18.9% to 162,200 teu but exports rose a healthy 5.2%, as foreign buyers were keen to take advantage of the decline in the value of the Rouble, which made traditional containerised exports such as paper and non-ferrous metals very attractive. TransContainer also reported that it had increased container carryings on Far Eastern Railways by 6% to record a figure of 395,000 teu for the first ten months of the year. This positive trend was continued in October, when container carryings were up by 2% on the same month in 2013.

East-Siberian Railways reported even more encouraging results for the current year, as the volume of cargo carried in containers rose by 13.1% to 232,300 tons. These results came as overall freight volumes in the region fell by 5% during the same ten-month period. One sector of Russian industry that was quick to exploit the devaluation of the Rouble was the forestry sector, which in the first three quarters of the year registered a 13.5% increase in the volume of exports. This, in turn, translated into a 12.8% rise in the value of its products to USD 1.3 Billion.

Of course, one area of the world that is not benefitting from the lower prices for Russian exports is the European Union. In the past decade, trade between the European Union and Russia had almost quadrupled to circa USD 336 Billion and many major European companies had come to view Russia as one of their fastest growing markets. It is calculated that before the current round of sanctions was imposed, exports to Russia accounted for 0.6% of Europe’s Gross Domestic Product. It is little wonder then that “Eurostat” confirmed that the Eurozone failed to grow in the two quarters between January and June. Germany’s Economics Ministry is now predicting the country will grow only 1.2% this year and 1.3% in 2015. That is significantly lower than previous forecasts of 1.8% in 2014 and 2% in 2014. The situation in France is not much better. With so much invested in Russia, it is little wonder that the brunt of a prolonged economic war with Russia is being felt by the European Union.

The effects of this economic war can clearly be seen in the container traffic at St Petersburg and Hamburg. In September, Petrolesport in St Petersburg returned an impressive rise in box throughput of 5% to give a figure of 56,900 teu for the month. At the same time, however, its sister terminal, FCT reported a sharp fall in box traffic of 22% compared with last October as imports from EU countries fell off. In Germany, the HHLA terminal in Hamburg benefited from the upsurge in cargo from S.E. Asia, as box throughput from the region rose by 8.5% in September. At the same time, however, container traffic on the feeder routes from the Hanseatic port to Russia was down by 5%.

With the trade route to the East currently blocked, the European Commission is making Euro 1 million available to investigate ways of improving the rail freight routes south from Germany and France to Portugal and Spain. Investigations will concentrate on identifying and removing constraints to the growth of rail traffic between Iberia and the EU’s two leading economies. Interestingly, both the proposed rail routes originate not at major cities but rather at large, modern container terminals located at Sines on the Atlantic coast and at Algeciras near to the Straits of Gibraltar. It appears that the EU is targeting the future growth of intermodal traffic on this important North-South axis. Algeciras is now Spain’s largest container port in the Mediterranean with a throughput of 4.33 million teu in 2013, which makes it the fourth largest in all of Europe just behind Bremerhaven. For its part, the port of Sines is well placed to serve the trade routes to North, Central and South America as well as to Western and Southern Africa.

Both ports are capable of handling 18,000 teu vessels and could be upgraded further to cope with the 24,000-teu behemoths that are currently on the drawing board. Of course, Spain and Portugal know a great deal about the routes from Europe to Asia and to America, as both Columbus and Magellan set sail on their voyages of discovery from the nearby ports of Palos and Sevilla. Once the EU rail study is completed, the two Iberian ports of Algeciras and Sines can be connected to the new high-speed, standard-gauge rail lines, which are already under construction from Southern Spain and the Portuguese Atlantic Coast to the heart of Western Europe. Travelling at 150 km per hour, container block trains from Sines and Algeciras could reach Paris and much of southern Germany in under 24 hours. Is this the solution to potential congestion at North Continental ports?

In the meantime, the world’s top ten container ports continue to report rising box throughput for the first nine months of the year, as volumes improved 5.6% to top 160 million teu. Shanghai, the world’s leading container port, clocked up an impressive 7.5% increase in its October throughput for a total of 3.2 million teu.

John Keir, Ross Learmont Ltd.
19 November 2014

Copyright ©, 2014, John Keir