Page 18 - Журнал Sozvezdye Review - «СОЗВЕЗДИЕ» #38

cal railway is used as an approach to river ports and for of multi-purpose ships (UPV), this also causes ships
transshipment to road transport. to make more voyages.
In the Yenisei River Basin, the major bulk of cargo That Arkhangelsk terminals’ design capacity out-
turnover is represented by Norilsk Nickel-bound ship- ranges the current transshipment needs, is a fact. The
ments and the output which is carried on return voy- terminals, in particular, share the open storage area of
ages from the ports of Krasnoyarsk, Lesosibirsk and one square kilometer. But, the “peak Arctic season”,
Dudinka. In the Lena River Basin, the cargo traffic has when volumes of transshipment grow seven-fold in
a large proportion of coal and petroleum products. summer, can change the whole picture. It is not sur-
prising that even with this colossal capacity, delays oc-
Arkhangelsk seaport cur. Arkhangelsk Sea Commercial Port (as an example)
has a good reserve of storage sites and berths but is bad-
The two seaports with the highest turnover of ship- ly lacking them in peak season.
ments bound for the operations in the Western and The key customers for the area’s multi-cargo ter-
Eastern sectors of the Russian Arctic are Murmansk minal services are Novatek, Norilsk Nickel, Gazprom,
and Arkhangelsk. In the cargo database of Kandalaksha Gazpromneft, Rosneft, or their contractors. Each of
and Onega, Arctic-bound cargoes represent a negligent them will continue operating in the Arctic during the
amount, if any. The ports in the Far East tend, in today’s next few decades – Arctic projects have a life span of
conditions of container shipping and coal projects, to more than 40–50 years – and there’s a whole range of
step aside from general cargo handling. new projects underway. In the meantime, the more in-
Arkhangelsk has traditionally been a seaport for the land zones remain underused. Partnership relations’
Arctic projects-bound goods and wood-based products, being “for one season and retarding” hinders the de-
the latter being produced by mills based in Arkhangelsk velopment of terminals in the long term; the low tariff
Oblast and adjacent regions. This has shaped the spe- rates do not allow upgrading of other services, includ-
cialization of the local terminals. ing automation, port facilities and technologies. Anoth-
Arkhangelsk’s cargo terminals are handling: er reason lies in cargo itself. Not to underestimate the
• export shipments of timber and pulp-and-paper importance of cargo handling technologies, but when
products (0.5–0.7 million tons); there’s thousands of items to be handled, identification
• export shipments of petroleum products (appr. 1 and classification appears challenging. Nor does it seem
million tons; 2 mln at peak times); expedient to utilize space, even if available, for han-
• dry cargoes bound for the Arctic projects (appr. 1.5 dling such items. One solution lies in prior packaging,
million tons of general cargo) and petroleum products consolidation and containerization. But who’s to start
(0.3 million tons). These include consignments from and promote them as services? Suppliers are not sim-
the Russian Defense Ministry; Federal Security Service ply many, they are excessively many, and they operate
Border Agency (supplies for development projects in the on FCA terms – transportation costs at suppliers’ ex-
Arctic areas); RosHydromet (supplies destined for polar pense. The result will not take long – chaotic cargo flows
stations); Russian Ministry of Natural Resources (sup- waiting to be handled at the gates of the sea terminals.
plies and fuels, including for national parks and cleanup Thus, all terminals in Arkhangelsk face one com-
projects on the Arctic islands). mon challenge – massively unequal distribution of in-
Given that the major bulk of cargoes that are coming and outgoing cargo traffic, coupled with the
bound for the Arctic development projects are gener- special nature of the cargoes. When planning their op-
al cargoes (construction materials, equipment and ma- erations, shippers look no further than their own cargo
chinery), the terminals are forced to stay multi-cargo. flows. When these flows come concurrently from mul-
SOZVEZDYE #38 And since most of their cargoes are one-off shipments, tiple shippers, who have schedules to follow, transship-
the increment in tonnage has been very slow. Over
ment instantaneously peaks. Add to that the delays in
the past three years (2019–2021), the per ton coastal ships’ arrival or seasonal shortage of ships (for exactly
carriages have increased by 22% in Arkhangelsk’s to- the same reason), and excessive cargo aggregation will
транспорт tal cargo turnover. At the same time, there is a steady be there to cause delays along the entire transportation
transport growth in operations, evidenced by the increasing chain from railway approaches to remoter Arctic port
number of ship calls in the summer months, July and localities. With ample margin of berths, storage sites,
August. And we are talking about six-fold (!) increase and railway capacity, Arkhangelsk, however, demon-
achieved in the timeframe of five years. The discrepan- strates its overall inefficiency as a hub.
cy between the tonnage figures and the number of ship The year 2021 turned out a “special” year for all
16 calls is explained by the “non-deadweight” nature of players on the Arctic transport arena. The long-sim-
mered problems had erupted into bitter competition
the cargoes being handled. Given the limited number