St Petersburg Port Cargo Handling Up by 12%

Sea Port of Saint-Petersburg (CTSP), a company of UCL Port, stevedoring division of the international transportation group UCL Holding, handled 7.7 million tonnes of cargo showing a 12-pct increase versus the result of 2017.

The increase of cargo traffic is attributed the development of yards dedicated for transshipment of cast iron, metal scrap, ore, mineral fertilizers and containers, said a release from the operator providing dry cargo transshipment in Saint-Petersburg port and the North-West of Russia.

Total transshipment of general cargo via Sp SPb grew by 5% to 6.67 million tonnes including 3.74 million tonnes of ferrous metal. The growth of ferrous metal transshipment was driven by cast iron, new type of cargo for the company: in the reporting period, its transshipment totaled 179,000 tonnes. Besides, transshipment of mineral fertilizers in big bags surged by 75% to 477,000 tonnes.

Transshipment of non-ferrous metal fell by 10% to 1.24 million tonnes. The decrease should be attributed to partial redirection of export flows to the domestic markets. Transshipment of wood pellets climbed by 1%, year-on-year, to 297,000 tonnes.

Considerable increase was seen in the segment of metal scrap transshipment. SP SPb has expanded the dedicated yard thereby attracting additional volumes of this cargo, which is currently in demand in the Republic of Turkey. In 2018, SP SPb handled over 825,000 tonnes of metal scrap, down 38%, year-on-year.

Transshipment of dry bulk cargo surged over 2.6 times to 597,000 tonnes mostly due to four-fold increase of ore transshipment, to 328,000 tonnes. The company also started handling ferrous-based alloys. In 2018, it handled 78,000 tonnes of this cargo. Besides, transshipment of bulk mineral fertilizers surged 2.7 times to 106,000 tonnes.

Throughout the year of 2018, the company continued development of its own container service. In the reporting period, container throughput totaled 33,300 TEUs (+30%, year-on-year) including more than 27,000 TEUs of export containers and more than 6,000 TEUs of import containers.