Аналитика

Vladivostok keeps rolling on, recording its highest ever throughput of containers in November, when the port handled 46,463 teu. Furthermore, during the period from June to October, the Far East port handled 213,076 teu, which is 13% more than in the previous 5 months. Containerised cargoes now constitute 63% of the total cargo passing through Vladivostok terminal. This makes the Far East region the fastest growing container market in Russia clocking up a 15.6% increase, which somewhat overshadows the 0.1% achieved in the Baltic basin.

Most associated with the repeal of the prohibition on the sale of alcohol in the USA, the song “Happy Days” was supposed to signal the end of the Depression and the start of a bright, new future. Sadly, history was at that moment composing a different song that marched and “goose-stepped” to a different beat. History has a nasty habit of upsetting “the best-laid schemes of mice and men”.

Like Scotland’s national poet, Fesco has lost its heart to the high lands formed by the  Ural mountains. However, Fesco’s block train service has its eye fixed more on the region’s traditional metal exports rather than the local wildlife. The UralShuttle has proved so successfully that early in the New Year Fesco will offer weekly departures from Chelyabinsk. And it is easy to see what it is that attracts the Far East Shipping Company to this watershed between East and West. Simply put, in the industrial metropolis in the Southern Urals Fesco has discovered the container equivalent of the Holy Grail– return cargo. On the inbound leg, Fesco carries consumer goods from Asia to the Urals, while on the backhaul leg containers are loaded with metal and plastic products destined for the Russian Far East. Since it was inaugurated last year, the service has carried 5,700 teu and in November Chelyabinsk welcomed the 100th Fesco block train from Vladivostok.

In the first ten months of this year, container throughput at the port of Los Angeles fell by 5.43% to 6.53 million teu. At the same time, however, the neighbouring Port of Long Beach handled 5.58 million teu to record a highly creditable 13.3% rise in box handling. Clearly, fierce  local competition does not hinder the development of container traffic. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Pacific, the two local rivals, Vladivostok and Vostochny notched up a combined 16.4% hike in box throughput. So far this year, imports through the two rival ports amounted to 436,000 teu – a rise of 14.4%. At 79,000 teu, transit cargoes were up by over one third, while cabotage rose by oneeighth to 393,000 teu.