Аналитика

22.11.2017 RLL Container Report - 22 November 2017
In September, Russian Railways transported 2.5 million tons of mineral and chemical fertilisers. Domestic deliveries have risen by 6%, while Russian fertiliser exports to China rose by 8%. PhosAgro, one of the world’s leading vertically-integrated, phosphate-based fertiliser producers reported that in the first nine months of the year production rose by 12% to 6.1 million metric tons. Nowadays, most of the fertilisers are transported in Big Bags loaded on conventional rail wagons. Theoretically, at least, this commodity could be transported by containers but now that Ilim has secured most available outbound containers for its exports of pulp and paper to China, there are neither sufficient containers nor rail slots for Russian manufacturers to follow the paper producer’s example and switch wholesale to intermodal transport. Also, it should be noted that by switching to container shipments, Ilim avoids the additional cost of repositioning empty wagons all the way back across Russia. That is in itself incentive enough to abandon rail wagons in favour of an intermodal solution.

15.11.2017 RLL Container Report - 15 November 2017
If we were to select a sector of industry, which did most in 2017 to develop intermodal traffic in Russia, you would not have to look much further than the producers of pulp and paper. Ilim Pulp is the largest producers of forestry products in Russia with mills located in the Arkhangelsk, Irkutsk, Leningrad and Moscow Regions. The plants churn out three-quarters of all Russian pulp and one fifth the country’s production of board. Last year, Ilim produced over 3 million tons of pulp and paper. Currently, just under half of all Ilim’s annual production is destined for China but over the next four years exports are projected to rise by over one third from 1.4 million to 1.9 million tons.

01.11.2017 RLL Container Report - 01 November 2017
Speaking at a recent intermodal conference, Alexi Grom forecast that within five years, the majority of cargoes will be transported by containers of one type or another. The President of OTLK predicts that by 2020 box traffic on the Eurasian rail routes will reach one million boxes per annum. In order to achieve this milestone, the average speed on the TranSiberian Railway line will have to rise to 100 kilometres per hour. This would have a beneficial effect not only on the main rail routes out of China to Western Europe but also on the volume of domestic box traffic moving on the broad-gauge network.

25.10.2017 RLL Container Report - 25 October 2017
Next year will witness the launch of the first Ultra Large Container Vessel with a capacity of 22,000 teu. This will then be followed by a whole fleet of ULVCs with a capacity totalling 1.12 million teu. It is important to note that the advantage of up-sizing to these mega vessels lies not in their capacity but more in the economics of deepsea, intercontinental transport. It is estimated that the Megamax vessels have a cost advantage of as much as USD 500 per teu over the 14,000 teu vessels, which only recently ruled the waves. These smaller, though still relatively new, vessels will now be relegated to the lower divisions of intercontinental trade.

11.10.2017 RLL Container Report - 11 October 2017
For once, the task of predicting the shape of things to come is rather easy: container vessels will be far larger and they will be coming out of shipyards in the Far East at a much faster rate. This year, monthly vessel deliveries have been running at 100,000 teu with a peak of 125,000 teu in July. Lines have placed large orders for vessels with a capacity of 19,000 to 21,000 teu, which will result in one of these giant vessels being launched every three weeks. Vessels of 12,000 teu capacity, which only very recently ruled the seas in Asia and Europe are now being relegated to the second division of trade routes. Currently, slot capacity is rising at eleven percent on the main trade route out of the Far East to Rotterdam but some concerns are being expressed about the ability of the market to absorb all this additional slot capacity. If not, will some services have to be reduced?