The container turnover at the Odessa merchant seaport increased by 13.2% to 244,227 TEU in the period of January-June, compared with the same period of last year, the press service of the port has announced, citing real-time data.
The port’s container turnover increased by 4.4% to 43,548 TEU in June.
The two container terminals currently functioning at the port are operated by the HPC Ukraine company and the Brooklyn Kiev Port company. The former increased its volume of cargo transshipment in TEU by 10.7% in June and by 26% in the entire January-June while the latter’s cargo transshipment volume remained unchanged from last year.
According to Ruslan Sakhautdinov, the port administration’s chief dispatcher and the head of the port’s operations department, the increase in container handling at the port by more than 10% in the first half of the year was due to external factors and the work of the relevant port services.
"The external factors include a certain degree of recovery of the container market in the Black Sea. The partial return of the cargo traffic that previously went to ports in Romania and Poland should also be noted. The latter is taking place because of the stabilization of the operations of customs agencies. Among the factors existing directly at the port, the main ones are the introduction of technological schemes for cargo processing that are more efficient and constant work with linear operators, freight forwarders, and cargo owners," said Sakhautdinov.
He added that the rate of increase of the cargo turnover (in tons) was significantly higher than the increase expressed in terms of containers (TEU). For example, 558,500 tons of containerized cargo were processes at the port in June (an increase of 20.4% compared with June 2012) and 3.029 million tons in the period of January-June (an increase of 23.6% compared with January-June last year). This indicates a reduction in the turnover of empty containers in favor loaded containers.
