Rail Garant News

Rail Garant Estonia adopted final technical and engineering solutions concerning the configuration of the container terminal as a whole and approved the preliminary draft in late November. The construction permit for the 2nd phase of the container terminal is planned to be obtained in the nearest future.

Rail Garant Estonia and the General Contractor – a consortium including LemminkäinenEesti AS and Insenerehituse AS – specified the period of container terminal construction and set it in the appropriate agreement on November 22, 2012. Under this agreement the construction of the first phase of the container terminal is planned to be completed in summer of 2013, while the second phase is planned to be completed by the end of 2013.

According to Pavel Makarov, a member of Rail Garant Estonia Board, the decision to purchase new high-tech crane equipment made by European producers has been taken in order to provide additional competitive advantages. “We plan to study a set of proposals. In particular we are interested in such brands as LIEBHERR and KONECRANES, but the final choice will depend on suppliers’ conditions”, he explained.

The estimated investment amount for the construction of the container terminal and the equipment both for the first 210 thousand TEU phase will amount to 50 million Euros per year. The investment amount for the construction of the container terminal and the equipment to process up to 300 thousand TEU per year will equal an additional 23 million Euros.

Analysts confirm the perspective viability of this Rail Garant Group project. According to estimates of the INFORMALL Business Group consulting company, container turnover of Baltic countries has been growing rapidly in recent years (about 25% per year), reaching 882 thousand TEU in 2011. The volume of the Russian market (including transit through the Baltic Sea and Finland) showed an average increase equal to 32% per year, up to 3 million TEU in 2011. It is expected that container turnover will reach 4.7 million TEU in 2015.

The Russian container market will become the second, excluding Baltic countries, for Baltic container terminals, providing a higher rate of container turnover growth. Container transportation in Estonia has been growing by 26.4% per year on average in the last three years, including transit traffic to Russia. In the next few years a further increase in the transit share can provide an increase in Estonian container turnover up to 30% per year.

Rail Garant Group is one of Russian leaders of railroad transportation of industrial cargoes, and is one of the five largest private Russian operators. The main cargoes transported by Holding companies are as follows: coal, iron ore, ferrroous and non-ferrous metals, polymers, liquefied petroleum gas, petrochemicals products, peroleum products, large-diameter pipes, bulk cargoes, and construction materials.

Rail Garant Group’s consolidated rolling stock has more than 32,000 cars, and annual traffic volume reaches 30 million tons.