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Russia’s state-owned Rosatom, through its Glavsevmorput subsidiary, will provide information and navigation support for the newly established container transportation service via the Northern Sea Route (NSR) between China and Russia.
The new line is a joint project of two Chinese companies, namely international shipping line Hainan Yangpu Newnew Shipping Co and cargo agent Torgmoll, Rosatom said in a statement.
The service was launched with NewNew Polar Bear, a reinforced ice-class container ship, with a capacity of 1,600 TEU which set sail on 7 July 2023 from St. Petersburg.
Depending on ice conditions, the estimated transit time will be about 28 days, which is 1.5 times faster than the route through the Suez Canal, which takes 45-50 days.
In China, the vessel will call at the ports of Qingdao and Tianjin, with Shanghai as the final destination.
NewNew Shipping Line’s representative in Russia Ke Jin said for the navigation period of 2023 through the NSR, the company will deliver four vessels on the route - Ports of St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad to Ports of China, as well as one vessel on ‘Port of Arkhangelsk – Ports of China’ route.
The four vessels will have capacities in the range of 1,600-3,500 TEU.
Vladimir Panov, Special Representative of Rosatom State Corporation for Arctic Development, said the current voyages are experimental, noting that the new line will operate in the summer-autumn navigation period connecting Russia’s northern ports with the ports of China.
“In the summer-autumn period, the Northern Sea Route can be navigated through open water and light ice conditions on low-ice or ice-free vessels. But these voyages are fundamentally important for rolling out the export route with containerised cargoes,” he said.
“Our next task is regular year-round navigation in the eastern direction,” he added.
At the end of 2020, about 1,300,000 tonnes of cargo were transited through the NSR via 61 vessels, 42 of which were foreign.
In 2021, the transit flow increased to 2 million tonnes, with 86 ships passing, including 75 foreign vessels.
China's COSCO Shipping, one of the world’s largest shipping companies, made 14 voyages along the NSR last year, the statement said.
(Writing by P Deol; Editing by Anoop Menon)
