Bananas are the fruits of the Russians and next year the national shipping company FESCO will buy the used container market of 6-7.000 teu carriers to get it from Ecuador, a Latin American nation from the what almost totals (96%) of bananas imported from Russia, replacing it in this traffic to the Danish Maersk Line and other foreign carriers, including Germany's Hapag-Lloyd, that because of the sanctions imposed against Russia over the invasion of Ukraine have ceased these transport.

The intention of the FESCO to engage in this activity has been the Russian business daily "RBC Daily" which, highlighting that the capacity of the carriers that the company intends to equip itself with is twice as high as the current vessels. of the Russian fleet arriving at most at just over 3,000 teu. The newspaper specified that imports of bananas could be addressed on the Baltic ports of Ust-Luga and Bronka, both near St. Petersburg.

Stating that ships from at least 5-6.000 teu of which FESCO is searching, carriers that would make the transportation of agricultural products from Latin America remunerative, currently cost at least 60 million, figure that exceeds 100 millions if container carriers are less than five years old, "RBC Daily" reported that according to Andrey Severilov, Chairman of FESCO, with the current "cooling" phase of the containerized shipping sector and the value of the ships used, on the market they begin to present offers for the sale of typology vessels sought by the Russian company that can make to the case of FESCO.

Asked by "RBC Daily," Alexey Bezborodov, chief executive of the transport consultancy firm InfraNews, said that previously, these trades were operated by only three major companies in the transport sector. navigation, the Maersk, the French CMA CGM and, sporadically, the MSC helvetica and specified that MSC ships continue to make a stopover in St. Petersburg by covering in general the needs of the Russian market. Therefore, according to Bezborodov, there are currently no particular difficulties in the import of agricultural products from Latin America, products which among other things are not subject to sanctions.

"RBC Daily" explained that, based on the data provided by Russian Customs, Russia imports bananas worth 1.07 billion, of which 1.03 billion is to purchase them in Ecuador. Last year, 1.4 million tonnes of bananas from Ecuador alone were landed in Russian ports. Following the start of the conflict with Ukraine, which took place on February 24, the Asociación de Exportadores de Banano of Ecuador said that in March 2022, the shipments of Ecuadorian bananas to Russia had fallen sharply with respect to the to the previous month by dropping from 9.32 million to 5.83 million crates.