Cargo, Latvia, Port, Tourism, Transport

Bulk cargo, which dominated the port’s cargo structure in the first ten months of 2018, rose 10.5% year-on-year to 19.305 mln tons. Handling of general cargo increased 23.6% to 7.134 mln tons and reloading of liquid cargo was down 28.5% to 3.478 mln tons.

According to the port’s information, coal accounted for 38.5% (35% in 2017 and 35.9% in 2016) of all cargo reloaded in the first ten months of this year. Handling of coal quickened 14.6% year-on-year to 11.509 mln tons in January-October 2018.

Container cargo made up 12.9%, oil products 11.5%, timber 11.1% and chemical cargo 6% of all cargo reloaded in the first ten months of this year. Reloading of oil products at the port fell 28.1% year-on-year to 3.445 mln tons in the first ten months of this year.

In October, the port reloaded 3.209 mln tons of cargo, which included 2.05 mln tons of bulk cargo, 776,700 tons of general cargo and 382,200 tons of liquid cargo.

In the first ten months of 2017, the Freeport of Riga reloaded 28.103 mln tons of cargo.

The port of Riga received 761,465 ship passengers in the first ten months of 2018, which was a 5.6% increase against the same period in 2017.

Of the ship passengers handled by the port in the first ten months of this year, 74,785 were cruise ship passengers, down 13% year-on-year.

As reported, Estonian ferry operator Tallink has two ferries – the Isabelle and the Romantika – running 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 freight and passengers.