Cargo, Containers, Good for Business, Latvia, Port

Bulk cargo, which dominated the port’s cargo structure in the first nine months of 2018, rose 8% year-on-year to 17.255 mln tons. Handling of general cargo increased 24% to 6.357 mln tons and reloading of liquid cargo was down 29.4% to 3.096 mln tons.

According to the port’s information, coal accounted for 39% (35% in 2017 and 35.9% in 2016) of all cargo reloaded in the first nine months of this year. Handling of coal quickened 11.5% year-on-year to 10.409 mln tons in January-September 2018.

Container cargo made up 12.8%, oil products 11.5%, timber 11.2% and chemical cargo 6% of all cargo reloaded in the first nine months of this year. Reloading of oil products at the port fell 29.1% year-on-year to 3.063 mln tons in the first nine months of this year.

In September 2018, the port reloaded 2.757 mln tons of cargo, which included 1.751 mln tons of bulk cargo, 752.5 tons of general cargo and 253,300 tons of liquid cargo.

In the first nine months of 2017 the Freeport of Riga handled 25.491 mln tons of cargo.

During the first nine months of 2018 the port of Riga served 698,329 ship passengers, up 5.9% against the same period a year ago, according to information released by the port.

The passengers handled in the nine months of 2018 included 74,690 cruise ship passengers, down 10.5% from the first nine months of last year.

As reported, Estonian ferry operator Tallink operates two ferries – the Isabelle and the Romantika - on the Riga-Stockholm route.

In 2017, the number of ship passengers in the port of Riga grew 42.8% year-on-year to 830,380. In January-June 2017, the port received 364,199 passengers.

Riga is the largest Latvian port by cargo turnover and also by the number of ship passengers.