English
In January 2012, 3.4 million tons of various cargoes were handled in the Freeport of Riga being the largest amount of cargoes handled during one month during the last 10 years. In January the Port of Riga in terms of cargo turnover was the largest port of the Baltic States, pulling ahead of Klaipeda, Tallinn and Ventspils. What is even more important – regarding strategically important types of cargoes – coal, containers and oil products, the results of the previous year were exceeded substantially.
Assessing the increase by cargo segments, the largest rise by 34.5% has remained in the dry bulk segment. The amount of coal when compared to the previous year increased by 39.6% and has reached 1.3 million tons. These figures reflect both the ability of the Freeport of Riga to adjust to the increasing demand of coal in the world markets, and the necessity to modernize the port infrastructure as the capacity of coal reloading approaches the maximum. With the aim to ensure long-term development and preserve the competitiveness, implementation of the Krievu sala project would have to be commenced immediately in order to avoid situation, when the demand exceeds capacity of the port and the port development is hindered. Besides, we would like to note that coal cargoes amount to almost 40% of the total dry bulk cargo turnover if the Freeport.
In the segment of dry bulk cargoes the amount of woodchip handling has increased by 51%, peat – by 89.2% and sawn timber – by 101.9%. The amount of reloading of mineral fertilizers has decreased, but the amount of other dry bulk cargoes has increased by 81.1%, including soy, wood pellets, asphalt, etc.
Increase in the liquid bulk segment is 17.6%. Altogether 900 thousand tons of oil products have already been handled this year. The provisional information states that the oil product handling volumes in the Freeport of Riga will continue to rise.
A strategically important achievement in the general cargo segment is the increased container cargo shipments in the Port of Riga. 300 thousand tons of container cargoes have been handled this year being by 45.5% more than during the respective period last year. In the Roll On/Roll Off cargo segment there has been an increase by 26.5% when compared to January 2011.
The year was started successfully also in the passenger transportation segment – 64 533 people have already been serviced this year that is by 15% more than during the first month of last year.
