Russian Railways would like to revoke the priority given so far to containerised cargo

According to the participants in the logistics market, in fact - it has specified the Moscow newspaper - given that at most one fifth of the transit traffic of containerized goods circulates on the railway infrastructures of the Eastern Polygon, consisting of the Trans-Siberian and Baikal-Amur, while the remaining share bypasses the Eastern Polygon passing through Kazakhstan, with the downgrading of containers the increase in capacity for other types of loads would be insignificant and the location of the Russia as a reliable transit country would come greatly put at risk.

"Kommersant" explained that from 2020 the categories priority of access of goods to the lines of the Polygon Eastern are established in such a way as to make such access not discriminatory, rules that with the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine have been suspended and replaced by temporary rules which, in particular, for example, they lowered the priority of exports of coal compared to other types of non-primary goods, and this last month led to a reduction in coal volumes transported from 70% to 68%, with a growth of +4% of ferrous metals and a rise close to +10% of loads containerized products that until now are considered a type of goods priority, second only to government and oil cargoes. The Newspaper reported that now the proposal would be to make the container transit traffic from hostile countries the least category a priority, placing it below coal exports, proposal that would be supported by the mining sector that would like significantly reduce container transport on these lines railway until they are reset until the effect of the The pressure of the sanctions imposed by the West will not cease.

"Kommersant" found that, however, through the Eastern Polygon passes a smaller share of the flows containerized crossing the Russian Federation: in 2021 of the 1.1 million teu transported in transit traffic China-Europe-China, the main share of containers, equal to 692 thousand teu, was transported by the services of the ULTC ERA, the joint venture consisting of the railways of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus, which in Russia do not use the infrastructure of the Eastern Polygon, while there were only 141 thousand teu containers in transit on the Far Eastern Railway and almost 73 thousand teu those transited on the Trans-Baikal railway, volumes that if will be reset - specified a representative of the sector logistics to "Kommersant" - they will release about 2-3 million tons of coal capacity, capacity negligible for the entire volume of coal exports Russian.

Another source of "Kommersant" highlighted moreover, that if significant volumes of transit traffic come from from the so-called hostile countries and are directed towards countries friendly to the Russia, like transit traffic from Korea to Uzbekistan through the ports of the Far East, the downgrading of containers it would also put shipments in the opposite direction at risk, from friendly to hostile countries, questioning at the level the reliability of Russia as a territory of transit and this would have a negative impact especially on the Russian market and on Russian logistics companies.