THE Black Sea container terminals of Ukraine, Romania, Russia, Georgia and Bulgaria collectively handled 2,927,016 TEU in 2018, representing a year-on-year increase of 8
THE Black Sea container terminals of Ukraine, Romania, Russia, Georgia and Bulgaria collectively handled 2,927,016 TEU in 2018, representing a year-on-year increase of 8.7 per cent. The throughput total includes empty containers but not transshipment volumes. Laden container traffic rose among all countries in the Black Sea region. Ukraine and Georgia recorded the highest growth at 18.99 per cent and 14.64 per cent, respectively. At the same time, Bulgaria, Russia and Romania achieved 4.52 per cent, 3.94 per cent and 0.35 per cent growth in laden container volume, respectively, Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide reported.
Last year 56.63 per cent of laden containers were imported, with 43.37 per cent of the volume being exported. It is estimated that laden container share stood at 74.76 per cent and empty containers accounted for 25.24 per cent of the traffic.
Export volumes rose by 3.12 per cent overall compared to 2017. Ukraine achieved export volume growth of 14.89 per cent. Romania suffered a 9.85 per cent decrease of laden export volume, while Georgia, Russia and Bulgaria experienced growth of 6.56 per cent, 5.09 per cent and 1.54 per cent respectively.
Import to the region was up by 13.4 per cent, mainly due to Ukrainian, Georgian and Romanian import volume growth of 23 per cent, 15.93 per cent and 15.91 per cent. Import volume of Bulgaria and Russia increased by 7.97 per cent and 3.19 per cent, respectively.
The top five container terminals in the region in 2018 changed their positions when ranked by total volumes handled, however, DPW (Constanta, Romania) and APMT Poti (Georgia) secured their top positions. CTO (Odessa, Ukraine) moved into third place, and NUTEP (Novorossiysk, Russia) slipped down into the fourth spot.
At the same time, BKP (Odessa, Ukraine) moved up to fifth place for the first time in recent years, while NLE (Novorossiysk, Russia) headed into the sixth position. All of these terminals except DPW achieved volume growth in 2018 compared to 2017.
WORLD SHIPPING
