The biggest shipment of vehicles on a deep-sea car carrier to call at the Russian port of Ust-Luga’s Yug2 car terminal arrived on Monday with a cargo of over 3,050 Hyundai vehicles.
The Grand Mercury, a Hyundai operated vessel, delivered the cars directly to the Russian market, which has typically had to wait for imports of this size via ports in Finland and the Baltic States because existing Russian terminals were not equipped to handle the type of vessels capable of high volume deliveries of this kind.
The shipment builds on a consignment of 1,800 Hyundai and Kia vehicles delivered there at the end of September by UECC and brings the number of vehicles processed since the spring at the Yug-2 terminal to more than 42,000.
The latest shipment underlines points made by Ust-Luga’s vice director, Alexander Goloviznin, at this year’s Automotive Logistics Russia conference that vehicles at the terminal were on the increase from summer this year and that the terminal was on its way to becoming the heart of finished vehicle transhipment for vehicles entering Russia.
Yug-2 is a multipurpose terminal designed for transhipment of rolling cargoes, including new imported cars, containers and general cargo. It has an initial capacity to handle 100,000 vehicles and is expected to handle 160,000 next year, according to Goloviznin, as it climbs toward a final capacity of 500,000 new imported cars per year.
Further developments at Ust-Luga were alluded to at the recent Renault-Nissan Alliance Outbound Logistics Europe Awards held in Paris.
Russian Transport Lines, which won Best Supplier for Inland Operations Efficiency, announced that progress was being made on the multipurpose terminal the company was developing there. Accepting the Alliance award RTL’s general director, Konstantin Skovoroda, said the company was continuing to invest in the terminal project – called Novaya Gavan – and expected to make announcement on its completion in the near future. “We are sure that our new terminal and its location is the best decision for all kinds of ro-ro cargo, but we are going to handle other cargo as well,” said Skovoroda.
