Khabarovsk Territory aims to increase cargo traffic on Amur to 20 mln tpy
KHABAROVSK. Dec 11 (Interfax) - Khabarovsk Territory, in cooperation with Russia's Federal Maritime and River Transport Agency (Rosmorrechflot), intends to restore cargo shipping along the Amur River, Governor Dmitry Demeshin said on Telegram on Wednesday.
"In the Soviet era, they annually shipped up to 20 million tonnes along our great Russian river. Current figures are ten times lower and we will correct this huge lapse," Demeshin said after a meeting with Rosmorrechflot head Andrei Tarasenko at which they discussed the development of inland waterways in the region's part of the Amur Basin and the creation of a logistics hub.
The governor said inland water transport plays a special role in sustaining northern parts of Khabarovsk Territory, in shipping socially important goods, but it is also important to develop logistical cargo shipping. Amur Basin waterways connect Russian Far Eastern territories and ports to one another, to Chinese ports and to countries in the Asia-Pacific region, he said.
He recalled that an agreement signed with Rosmorrechflot calls for developing inland waterways in the Amur Basin and creating a river logistics hub. This hub is expected to be based on the Khabarovsk Commercial River Port.
Tarasenko said Khabarovsk is the best region for this, because the Amur River has four key ports and there are prospects for reaching the port of Harbin. Negotiations are now underway with China on restoring the Sungari River (Songhua River). The creation of a multimodal logistics hub would give a push to increasing cargo shipping along the Amur.
One of Rosmorrechflot's objectives is to ensure the Amur is sufficiently deep for cargo vessels. It also needs to work with the region to arrange training of skilled workers for the river shipping industry at the existing Khabarovsk Vocational School.
The CEO of the Khabarovsk port, Yury Obukhov said in an interview with local publication Tikhookeanskaya Zvezda in early December that the port operated at just 20% of capacity during the 2024 navigation season, handling about 200,000 tonnes of cargo instead of the 1 million tonnes it is capable of, including 8,500 tonnes of coal, 893 TEU of loaded containers and 28,000 tonnes of cement.
"We worked rather poorly with China, frankly speaking. Cargo only flowed at the end of the navigation season. As we understand, there's a bit of an economic crisis in China. We worked according to its circumstances. When the border in Transbaikal was overrun with containers with Chinese automobiles and they were running out of time to undergo processing before the vehicle scrapping fee increase, they shipped 400 containers to Khabarovsk. We transshipped them here," Obukhov said.
The port is hoping for more traffic in next year's sailing season, as well as an expansion of the cargo mix with China, including coal, oil products and other cargo in large amounts.
"I believe that inland water transport requires state assistance, state support. It needs to be included in the plans of corporations, infrastructure projects, actively involved in construction in the region," Obukhov said.
The Khabarovsk Commercial River Port, established in 1872, specializes in handling cargo shipped along the Amur River, including oil products, as well as producing aggregates from run-of-river deposits. The port has six berths.
The company reported that, as of the end of 2023, Yury Obukhov owned 31.03% of the port directly and indirectly, Alexander Kulagin owned 13.54% through Alatyr LLC, Svetlana Titova held 10.58% and Natalya Tereschenko owned 8.07% through Cement Service LLC.