Russia’s ocean container imports continue to fall as shipping companies wind down the remaining vestiges of their services to the country’s ports.
Russia, which is now practically a pariah in Western logistical circles, nevertheless has cargo import possibilities. However, the loss of practically all of its ocean shipping links makes procuring consumer items and components much more difficult.
Russia’s Central Bank chairwoman, Elvira Nabiullina, recently warned that the range of consumer goods accessible in her nation is already dwindling, and Russian enterprises requiring foreign components are encountering “severe issues.”
Top airlines are reducing service.
In the days following Ukraine’s incursion, the world’s biggest container companies stopped bookings to Russia. However, some service was maintained, including efforts to evacuate liner-owned empty cargo from Russian ports.
In the third week of April, automated identification system (AIS) vessel-position data revealed that at least 10 MSC container ships and five Maersk ships had either recently called or were planning to call in St. Petersburg in the Baltic Sea or Novorossiysk in the Black Sea. MSC and Maersk are the largest and second-largest ocean carriers in the world, respectively.
According to AIS data, MSC’s calls to Russian ports were reduced to three ships as of Wednesday: the 2,604-TEU MSC Lara, which arrived in Novorossiysk on Thursday, and the 2,490-TEU MSC Pamira III and 2,250-TEU MSC Andriana III, which recently departed Novorossiysk.
According to Alphaliner, “the 3,596-TEU Voga Maersk made its final visit to St. Petersburg on April 29.” Earlier that week, four of her sister ships — the Venta Maersk, Vayenga Maersk, Vuoksi Maersk, and Vaga Maersk – called to evacuate empty containers to North European ports.”
Maersk’s Rotterdam-to-St. Petersburg service with two 3,596-TEU boats ended in March. According to Alphaliner, Maersk’s previous call to Novorossiysk was on April 21 with the 2,274-TEU Nele Maersk.
According to vessel-position data, container-ship visits to St. Petersburg and Novorossiysk are presently highly constrained. The remaining service providers are mainly tiny container ships with container capacities of less than 1,000 TEUs and general cargo ships with container capacities of less than 500 TEUs.
Container ship calls to Russia are declining, according to VesselsValue, a data source based in the United Kingdom that records the weekly frequency of container ship calls at Russian ports. Weekly calls were down 38% in the nine weeks following the invasion (through the first week of May) compared to the nine weeks before the invasion.
The dip was caused by a 55% decrease in calls to Russia’s European ports. According to VesselsValue, there were only four calls to Novorossiysk in the first week of May. That’s less than a third of the weekly average before the invasion.
Meanwhile, container-ship calls to Russia’s Pacific container gateway in Vladivostok (positioned far from major population centers) have been remarkably unaffected. They are only down 9% since the invasion.
Russia bookings are down.
The severity of Russia’s maritime container import crisis is highlighted by data from FreightWaves’ SONAR Container Atlas, a new ocean data platform unveiled on Tuesday.
Bookings to Russia are down.
The severity of Russia’s maritime container import crisis is highlighted by data from FreightWaves’ SONAR Container Atlas, a new ocean data platform released Tuesday.
Not only is the frequency of calls decreasing, but the average capacity of existing boats is decreasing as Maersk and MSC services that deploy larger ships wind down. SONAR Container Atlas uses ship-position data to illustrate that the capacity of container ships heading for Russia has dropped to around one-sixth of pre-invasion levels.
The volume of bookings (using the booking data source for SONAR Container Atlas) is also around one-sixth of what it was before the invasion.
And, in the month following the invasion, SONAR Container Atlas data showed significant increases in booked cargo that were not loaded by ocean carriers.
In the aftermath of the invasion, declining bookings increased to more than five times the usual levels. As a result, not only did bookings fall, but a major portion of Russia’s anticipated imports never ever made it onto the ships. It’s no surprise that Nabiullina is concerned about her country’s shrinking supply of consumer products and components.
