This year, with the war started by Russia in Ukraine, has shown that, most likely, cargo flows will never be, or at least in the near future, the same as before the war, says Ansis Zeltiņš, manager of Riga Freeport .
He expressed that the year 2022 should be assessed as stable, because despite all the geopolitical upheavals, the amount of cargo transhipped in the port has increased compared to 2021.
“The functioning of ports has always been a mirror of the economy, so any changes in trade and cargo transportation also affect the Port of Riga. The last three years have been full of challenges for all industries. However, if in the context of the pandemic we talked about the ability of the sector to return to the usual order, then 2022 The year with the war started by Russia in Ukraine has shown that the flows of goods will probably never be, or at least in the near future, the same as before”, Zeltiņsh said.
He stressed that in 2022, the port and its terminals faced huge challenges. This included the ability to find new cargoes and new cargo markets, while being flexible and adapting infrastructure accordingly are currently key issues on the agenda of many port terminals.
Zeltins stressed that the year has shown that the port of Riga is ready for challenges. “Instead of Russian transit coal, coal from Kazakhstan, Africa and other coal-mining places in the world arrives less often. Instead of Russian transit mineral fertilizers, a production plant has been set up in the port for the ‘packaging of Norwegian mineral fertilizers,’ Zeltins stressed. adding that, of course, the current volumes are not yet able to compensate for the previous transit flow, however, the beginning allows us to look to the future with hope.
This year, coal transportation has returned to the port of Riga. With European countries looking for alternative solutions to Russian coal, as well as with the Port of Riga Authority and businessmen actively working on finding new cooperation partners and supply chains, Riga has gradually become a port where cargoes of coal are brought in and out by ships. This year required intense work of the Riga port terminals, looking for new cooperation partners, as well as introducing new solutions in logistics processes and cargo handling.
The flow of container cargo sent through the port has also increased this year. At the beginning of December, the amount of containers transhipped in the entire last year has already been exceeded. The port authority explains that the increase is linked to the reduction of the impact of the pandemic at the beginning of the year, but above all to the logistic chains interrupted due to the war and the creation of alternative routes for the delivery of containers through the port of Line.
The largest cargo group of the port is still forest cargo, however, their volume is less than last year, which can be explained both by insufficient resources and rising costs, and by the fact that the economic activity in the export markets is shrinking as overhead costs rise.
Freeport also explained that in the last few years a stable trend of increasing cargo of agricultural products can be observed in the port of Riga. This was facilitated by the operation of the port terminals by reorganizing the operation and adapting the infrastructure for the loading of agricultural goods, as well as the arrival of Latvian farmers in the port, in 2021 the cooperative company of agricultural services LATRAPS bought the capital shares of the port terminal SIA “Alpha osta”. As a result, since 2018, the share of cargo of grain and agricultural products in the port of Riga has increased more than 2.5 times, reaching 2.94 million tons in 2021.
This year, indicators of agricultural cargo turnover of the Port of Riga will remain at last year’s level. In the segment of agricultural cargoes, the year is marked by the active involvement of the port administration and port traders in the search for alternative routes for the export of Ukrainian agricultural products and in the creation of completely new types of goods and supply chains. In addition to the traditional cargoes of cereals, rapeseed and legumes, several ships with Brazilian sugar arrived this year, which was then sent to Uzbekistan.
The Port of Riga is the largest port in Latvia in terms of the volume of transhipped cargo.
