New Liner Services Between Hamburg, Russia

Starting in November 2011, two new feeder line services will be scheduled for regular sailings between the Port of Hamburg and Russia. The shipping company Team Lines will be using the RUS 2 Service in the Hamburg – St. Petersburg – Hamburg – Bremerhaven – Hamburg rotation to augment its RUS 1 service handled by its own vessels with capacities of OOCL for containerised shipping to this key market region. The first ship will be sailing from Hamburg on 7 November. The Swan Container Line has also included Hamburg in its weekly schedule for its St. Petersburg service. On the Hamburg – St. Petersburg – Rotterdam – Hamburg rotation, two 900 TEU container vessels link Germany’s largest seaport with Russia.
In addition, the shipping company Unifeeder has announced plans to include the new Russian container terminal in Ust-Luga in its schedule starting in November. Accordingly, the shipping company is the first to add the new terminal at the gates of St. Petersburg to its liner services. Ust-Luga was set up as a complement and an alternative to the terminal partly operating at maximum capacity in the port of St. Petersburg. Moreover, this region of the Baltic Sea is less prone to becoming ice-bound in winter.
For the Port of Hamburg, the new terminal in Ust-Luga will play an important role for handling cargo shipped to and from Russia. As part of the port soiree organized by Port of Hamburg Marketing (HHM) in St. Petersburg, the development enterprise Ust-Luga Company AG invited the HHM member companies to an exclusive tour of the new terminal premises. Over 250 guests attended the reception of the Port of Hamburg in the restaurant “Le Vernissage” at the Hotel Ambassador in St. Petersburg, including a high-calibre business delegation headed by Senator Frank Horch, President of the Ministry for Economic Affairs, Transport and Innovation, 50 guests from Hamburg and the metropolitan region as well as numerous representatives from local and regional political circles and the business community.
Russia is the most significant trading partner for the Port of Hamburg in the field of European container transportation. World-wide, Russia ranks in third position on the list of the top trading partners of the Port of Hamburg. In the first half of 2011, the volume of containers transhipped between Hamburg and Russia, at 276,000 TEU, turned out well above average, equivalent to a growth rate of 45 per cent year-on-year. For the first half of 2011, the region of St. Petersburg registered a 5 per cent increase in total seaborne cargo handling. This trend will continue following the completion of the port of Ust-Luga.