FESCO seeing trend towards declining containerized auto shipments from China to Russia

MOSCOW. March 17 (Interfax) - A reduction in transportation of new Chinese automobiles in containers from China to Russia could become one of the main trends affecting the Russian container shipping market, FESCO Linear Logistics Division Vice President Herman Maslov said.

"In 2024, in my estimation, this [containerized auto shipments] saved the market, because all the excess capacity in the fleet and on Russian Railways' network in terms of rolling stock was filled with Chinese automobiles, thereby boosting the market. In 2025, we see a sharp decline in these volumes," Maslov said at the Russian-Chinese Behind Containers conference.

"Let's see what trend we observe in the next two to three months. If the driver remains in place, the market will be fine. If auto shipments decline and we stop buying Chinese cars, the fleet and rolling stock will face challenging times," Maslov said during a conference speech.

There is also a trend of containerized cargo shifting to the ports of the Northwest and Novorossiysk, which has eased the pressure on terminal congestion in the Far East, he said.

FESCO previously said that the group increased containerized shipments of automobiles and components from China to Russia 36% in 2024, reaching nearly 36,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU). The growth in auto shipments on this route was also reflected in the statistics of China's General Administration of Customs. The data shows that passenger cars worth $15.2 billion (+30.5%), trucks worth $2.7 billion (-12.4%) and automotive components worth $2.7 billion (+29.5%) were supplied from China to Russia last year.

The FESCO transport group, whose parent company is PJSC Far Eastern Shipping Company , owns assets in the port, railway and integrated logistics business. FESCO owns PJSC Commercial Port of Vladivostok , the FESCO Integrated Transport intermodal operator, the Dalreftrans refrigerated container operator, as well as the Transgarant and FESCO Trans companies.

The group manages terminal complexes in Novosibirsk, Khabarovsk, Tomsk, and Vladivostok. The company manages a container fleet of over 200,000 TEU and over 15,000 flat cars. The group's fleet includes more than 30 vessels, which operate primarily on the company's own shipping lines. The controlling stake of 92.5% in FESCO was transferred to Rosatom as per Russian presidential decree in November 2023.