Problems of transportation of timber cargo
Currently, there is a gradual recovery in the volume of railway transportation of forest products. Experts note positive trends that indicate an exit from the crisis of the last two years. However, market participants also point to a number of difficulties associated with logistics and payments between partner countries.
Domestic timber transportation
According to the Operators' Information Center, in the period from January to May, the bulk of timber cargo transportation was concentrated on domestic routes. And this trend continues, which is explained by the redistribution of logistics flows from the Northwestern Federal District to the southern and eastern regions. In April, the increase was 2.9% compared to last year, in May - 9.2%, in June - 6.6%. In the first half of the year, the loading of forest products in domestic traffic increased by 5.4% and reached 10.3 million tons.
The TransLes analytical center analyzed the key indicators of rail transportation of forest cargo and revealed an increase in domestic volume: in the first six months of 2024, the total volume of transportation of forest products and sawn timber amounted to 14.9 million tons - the same as for the whole of 2023.
Export direction
In the first six months of 2024, the volume of export rail transportation of timber and sawn timber decreased by 10% compared to the same period in 2023, amounting to 5.8 million tons. Exports of sawn timber decreased by 9% and reached 4.8 million tons.
China remains the main market for the Russian forest industry complex, where 57.24% of all exports. In the first half of 2024, 3.5 million tons of products were delivered to China, which is 10% less than last year. Russia also exports sawn timber to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Iran, Japan and other countries.
Shipment by rail is limited by the capacity of the eastern direction, and the cost of container sea transportation depends on the volume of imports to the ports of the North-West from China and the countries of South and South-East Asia. The most cost-effective option is the supply of sawn timber from the North-West region to China through land border crossings (Zabaikalsk, Grodekovo, Naushki). However, the number of approved applications for direct trains for sawmills through these hubs is insufficient.
Cross-border payments
After the introduction of sanctions, domestic exporters had problems with conducting monetary transactions with Turkey, and then with China, including transactions in Chinese banks. At the moment, Russia and China are looking for possible alternatives to the SWIFT international bank transfer system.
One of the possible solutions is to use the international bank transfer system CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System), created in China in 2015. It only works with settlements in yuan, but Russian businesses are already switching to local currencies. However, there is a nuance: representatives of other countries cannot become direct participants in CIPS. They can only access the system through intermediaries - Chinese correspondent banks, which is the main difficulty.