On Feb. 6 Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Russian Railways (RZD) President Oleg Belozyorov to discuss plans to complete building the new Arctic port of Lavna, the Murmansk transport hub, to serve as the northern anchor of the International North-South Transport Corridor, that goes to Mumbai, India. According to RailFrieght.com Lavna is primarily a coal shipment terminal, but will be expanded to handle containers, minerals, fertilizers and general cargo. It is located at Murmansk, on Russia’s far northwest on the Kola Peninsula, near Norway. The port is ice free. The first phase of the port will be operational by the end of the year Belozyorov told Putin. The Lavna Coal Terminal, a new transshipment complex with a yearly capacity of 18 million tonnes will be operational by December 2024. The port will serve as an outlet to the North Atlantic. RZD had more volumes going east than west for the first time ever
At the meeting Belozyorov told Putin, “For the first time in the history of our railway traffic, freight volumes to the east exceeded volumes to the west.” For the second half of 2022, some 80 million tonnes were shipped east, while 76 million were moved west. That is not only because of Western sanctions against Russia, but also the fact that the coal that had originally been planned for export to Europe, particularly Germany, is now going East, primarily to China. RZD’s first double heavy freight train, deployed in August, headed also toward the east.
