Cargo, Latvia, Port, Transport

The representative explained that the decline in cargo turnover was planned when drafting the freeport’s 2018 budget. The port’s analysts have been following processes, so the reduction of cargos did not come “out of the blue”, said Gailitis.

The steepest drop was recorded in the segment of liquid cargos, basically oil products, whose turnover fell 39.7% year-on-year. “The drop in these cargos has not happened now, it has continued for all the past year, actually, since the end of 2016. There is a geopolitical reason for that because Russia is currently diverting all its cargos to its own ports,” said Gailitis.

Coal is another segment where cargo turnover has been declining lately. Gailitis attributed this to the fact that demand for coal has been very strong in recent years and a lot of these cargos were shipped through the Freeport of Riga.

All these changes, however, have been planned in the freeport’s budget. “Actually, we had projected the January result to be even worse than it was,” Gailitis said.

The port’s representative also noted that cargo turnover did not drop in all segments and that reloading of container cargos, for instance, even increased.

As reported, the Freeport of Riga reloaded 2.771 million tons of cargo in January 2018, down 13.5% from the respective period last year.

Bulk cargos accounted for 1.704 million tons of the annual cargo turnover last year, down 11.2% year-on-year. Handling of general cargos rose 13.2% year-on-year to 623,800 tons, and reloading of liquid cargos fell 39.7% to 442,800 tons.

Coal prevailed among the cargos reloaded in the Freeport of Riga in January at 32.1%, compared to 35% in 2017.

Oil products made up 15.8% of all cargos handled in the port last year, followed by container cargos with 13.4%, timber with 8.4% and chemical cargos with 7.9%.

Riga is the largest Latvian port by the turnover of cargos and passengers.