OREANDA-NEWS. August 12, 2010.  Seven-month trade flows via Murmansk Commercial Sea Port (MCSP JSC) shrank by 18% to 7,450,000 tons of cargo, the MCSP’s press service said.

The stevedore report said the cargo volume decline was caused by the Jan-Feb. shortfalls by the railroad in coal deliveries due to extremely low temperatures in the Kuzbass, the announced in March by the railroad authority of coal shipments to the Murmansk Port in March due to heavy snowfall, as well as the decline in handling of export coal at the port of Murmansk in connection with the break of coal production imposed by Rostekhnadzor on several Kuzbass coal mines.

As a result, the backlog reached 1.89 million tons of coal. The Port Authority had taken all possible measures to attract new freight flows, in particular – the volumes of iron ore concentrate, manganese ore and ferrous metals increased by 352,000 tons, the company said. Currently, the capacity of transshipment facilities allow handling of additional 2 million tons of coal, more than 800 tons of iron ore concentrate, as well as the cargo volumes with the destination to Dudinka, being handled this year by the MMC Norilsk Nickel’s Murmansk branch.
 
The stevedore company said the number of handled vessels had decreased as well, to 276 ships, as compared with 298 units in Jan-Jul., 2009. At the same time, the processing of vessels this year has increased: operations with bulk cargo - by 5%, with general and other goods – by 9%.

There were fewer railcars handled this year: 106,503 units versus 127,569 units in the same period of 2009. The average time spent to discharge railcars remained stable - about 0,35 h/car.

In early 2010 the company expended considerable funds to purchase equipment, tools and materials for repair of railcars and equipment to facilitate unloading of frozen coal. As a result, the stevedore managed to reduce the detention of cars. This is evidenced by the reduction of fees paid for the use of cars, from 4,55 to 1,9 million rubles, despite the fact that the turnover of cars decreased by 16.6%.

Besides, in 2010 the company established the monitoring and control of condition of railcars arriving in the port. The monitoring confirmed that more than 50% of all cars were damaged. Nevertheless, all the cars were discharged at the port, returned to railroad without any claims. This year, the port has not turned any railcar over to depot repair.

Murmansk seaport was founded in 1994 and is rated currently the forth largest Russian port by the volume of handled cargoes. The company operates 17 berths with total length of about 3,000 meters. The berths length and depths allow docking of vessels of up to 15,5 meters draft and with a length of more than 265,000 meters. Last year’s throughput of MCSP exceeded 15.1 million tons. Specialized Project Investments BV (Netherlands) owns 46.63% of common stock in the company. The Russ. Govt. holds a 34% stake in MCSP.