Logistics of North-West Russia and Rail Baltica: Standpoints of Private Sector

Abstract

The main aims of the present report are to describe the current state of railway transport\nin Russia, and to gather standpoints of Russian private transportation logistics sector\ntowards the development of new railway connection called Rail Baltica Growth Corridor,\nconnecting North-West Russia with Germany through the Baltic States and Poland.\nNorth-West Russia plays important role not only in Russian logistics, but also wider\nEuropean markets as in container sea ports handling is approx. 2.5 mill. TEU p.a. and\nhandling volume in all terminals is above 190 million tons p.a.\nThe whole transportation logistics sector is shortly described as an operational\nenvironment for railways – this is done through technical and economic angles.\nTransportation development is always going in line with economics of the country, so the\nanalysis on economical development is also presented. Logistics integration of the\ncountry is strongly influenced by its engagement in the international trade. Although, raw\nmaterial handling at sea ports and container transports (imports) are blossoming,\ndomestic transportation market is barely growing (in long-term perspective). Thus, recent\nentrance of Russia into World Trade Organization (WTO) is analyzed theme in this\nresearch, as the WTO is an important regulator of the foreign trade and enabler of volume\ngrowth in foreign trade related transportation logistics. However, WTO membership can\ninfluence negatively the development of Russia’s own industry and its volumes (these\nhave been uncompetitive in global markets for decades).\nData gathering in empirical part was accomplished by semi-structured case study\ninterviews among North-West Russian logistics sector actors (private). These were\nconducted during years 2012-2013, and research compiles findings out of ten case\ncompany interviews. Although, there was no sea port involved in the study, most of the\ninterviewed companies relied in European Logistics within significant parts in short sea\nshipping and truck combined transportation chains (in Russian part also using railways).\nAs the results of the study, it could be concluded that Rail Baltica is seen as possible\ntransport corridor in most of the interviewed companies, if there is enough cargo\navailable. However, interviewees are a bit sceptical, because major and large-scale\ninfrastructural improvements are needed. Delivery time, frequency and price level are\nthree main factors influencing the attractiveness of Rail Baltica route. Price level is the\nmost important feature, but if RB can offer other advantages such as higher frequency,\nshorter lead times or more developed set of value-added services, then some flexibility is\npossible for the price level. Environmental issues are not the main criteria of today, but\nare recognized and discussed among customers. Great uncertainty exists among\nrespondents e.g. on forthcoming sulphur oxide ban on Baltic Sea shipping (whether or not\nit is going to be implemented in Russia). Rather surprisingly, transportation routes to\nEastern Europe and Mediterranean area are having higher value and price space than\nthose to Germany/Central Europe. Border crossing operations (traction monopoly at rails\nand customs), gauge widths as well as unclear decision-making processes (in Russia), are\nnamed as hindering factors. Performance standards for European connected logistics\namong Russian logistics sector representatives are less demanding as compared to\nneighbourhood countries belonging to EU.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 4 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.