Russian President Vladimir Putin has publicly acknowledged that Novorossiysk is one of the most important and largest transport hubs in the country and its modernisation has therefore become one of the top priorities of the government’s transportation programme. However, developments continue to lag well behind those in either Illichivsk or Odessa.

A local shipping agent tells Port Strategy that things are now changing.Following the break up of the Soviet Union, he points out that there was significant upheaval in Russia and that money for capital investment had not been available. Now,“money is no longer an issue; there are numerous very rich people  interested in investing in Novorossiysk”, he says.

The first fruits of this investment have seen the former timber terminal converted into a wholly container handling facility,which will be equipped with new ZPMC quayside gantry cranes. This will join Novorossiysk Commercial Seaport (NCS) and UTEP in competing for container traffic and boost capacity at  the port to in excess of 1m teu.To date,both these latter terminals have undertaken modest improvements to their quayside lift. NCS, for example, brought in Gottwald mobile harbour cranes to take care of its box  traffic, while UTEP acquired two second-hand gantry cranes from Germany.

“Once this new terminal has become operational,we will finally become competitive with Ukraine,” notes the shipping agent, who nevertheless went onto note that success ultimately rests with improving government bureaucracy in areas such as customs  control and taxation, which need a major overhaul if Russian ports are ever to become truly competitive.

The impact of this new capacity at Novorossiysk on current transhipment terminals in Constantza and Istanbul could prove highly interesting, too.At present,  a lot of boxes are rotated into and out of Russia from outlets in these two ports.However,major lines are now to some extent bypassing these options in favour of ever greater numbers of direct calls. MSC, for example, now deploys 5,000 teu vessels on its Far East service into Novorossiysk and is nowadays the port’s largest container customer. Other big hitters are ZIM and Maersk, while P&O Nedlloyd (now part of Maersk),CMA CGM and the Turkish line Arkas have all established a  foothold.

The shipping agent notes that there is now a significant imbalance of trade between Russia and countries such as China, Japan and South Korea, with about 30% of all boxes handled being empties.

As for the future,UTEP alone saw throughput in 2006 grow 82.5% to 99,121 teu. Once the reconstructed timber terminal commences container handling operations, Novorossiysk should be able to reduce congestion levels to acceptable standards. However, there is not much space left at the port to undertake further developments.Future capacity will be provided at the new Russian Black Sea port of the Taman Peninsula, which is currently under construction and should feature major box handling facilities.