OREANDA-NEWS. October 20, 2011. The volume of international traffic between Russia and the Baltic countries for the first 9 months of 2011 increased by 5.5% to 49.3 million tonnes.

Of these, 42.6 million tonnes were exported (+2.2%), 2.7 million tonnes were imported (+78.9%), and goods in transit totalled 4 million tonnes (+14.3%).

The volume of container traffic in international traffic between Russia and the Baltic states in January-September 2011 amounted to 1,093 thousand tonnes, up 21.3% over the same period last year.

Transportation of export cargo in containers increased by 2.3 times and amounted to 65,900 tonnes, imports increased by 64.4% (322,300 tonnes), and transit increased by 4.1% (705,100 tonnes.)

Container trains have travelled between Russia and the countries of the Baltic region for seven years.

In May 2003, train № 1418, ‘Baltika – Transit’ travelled from the Republic of Latvia, the Republic of Lithuania, and the Republic of Estonia to the countries of the CIS through the territory of Russia.

Its travel time between the Russian railway station of Zilupe (at the Russian-Latvian border crossing) and Ozinki (at the Russia-Kazakhstan border crossing) was 2 days, 23 hours, and 47 minutes. The distance along the Zilupe – Ozinki route is 2,047 km.

In accordance with the agreement between the government of the Russian Federation and NATO which was signed in February 2009, TransContainer organised a trial run of a container train along the route from the Krasta railway station in Riga, Latvia to Galaba railway station in Uzbekistan with transit cargo in large containers, which were due for Afghanistan.

The Baltika Transit container train then received a regular schedule.

During the first 9 months of 2011, 111 container trains followed on the same route, and 12,454 TEUs were transported, which is 25% lower than in the same period in 2010.