ESP calls for resuming additional container train shipments to Far East

MOSCOW. June 20 (Interfax) - Eurasian freight rail association ESP, which includes Russia's largest container operators, has come out in favour of bringing back additional container train runs from central Russia to the country's Far East.

"A state support measure like 22 container trains to the East, which was in effect for all of 2023 on the orders of the Russian president, ended. After it ended we lost at least 20% in volume to the East in 2024," ESP executive director Sergei Avseikov said at the Siberian Transport Forum on Wednesday.

The decision to run an additional three container trains per day on top of the existing 19 trains, bringing the total to 22 trains, was made at the end of 2022. Along with other measures, this made it possible to ship out imported containers and decongest overwhelmed ports in the Russian Far East.

Due to the lack of railway infrastructure on the eastern route, there is now a significant imbalance between export freight traffic headed east and imports going west, which has led to the massive accumulation of empty containers in the European part of Russia, Avseikov said. And since much of the export freight base is in Siberia, local shippers are experiencing a shortage of containers. In future, there will be a restructuring of freight traffic, but until this happens a number of support measures are needed from the government, he said.

"For this it would be right to resume the mentioned measure to send 22 container trains to the East in 2024," Avseikov said.

The ESP said in its report for 2023 that shipments of containerized freight by railway in Russia could increase by 10%-11% in 2024.

The freight base for container shipments on eastern railways heading east could have increased by 38% to 32.7 million tonnes in 2024 from 23.7 million tonnes in 2023 in the absence of infrastructure constraints, the ESP said. Given the potential growth of the freight base, 36 container trains per day need to be running east along Russia's eastern railways in 2024, the report said. The ESP expects these figures to grow to 48.9 million tonnes and 52 container trains per day by 2035.

The ESP was formed by Russia's largest container operators and its members own about 95% of the fleet of well cars operating on the Russian Railways network. They also account for over 92% of the combined capacity of transport and logistics centers and about 63% of the capacity of marine container terminals in Russia.