OREANDA-NEWS  On 26 November PJSC Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port (LSE: NCSP, RTS & MICEX: NMTP) reported consolidated operating results for the first 10 months of 2008. Cargo turnover grew to 68.041 million tons or up 3.42% from the same period last year.

“October was one of the most dynamic months for NCSP. Monthly turnover totaled 7.7 million tons, which is an 8.9% hike compared to October 2007. For the total 10 months of 2008 we added 2.24 million tons against same period last year.

Important to say, that key segments, including containers and petroleum products, continue to show sustainable growth – they are up 50.6% and 19.2% respectively,” said CEO of NCSP Igor Vilinov, commenting on the group’s operating results for 10 month of 2008.

The share of containers in the NCSP Group’s total cargo turnover for 10 months of 2008 increased to 6.5% against 4.4% in the same period last year. In absolute terms container handling reached 314,400 TEU, up 50.6% from 10 months of 2007. Container handling in October increased by 10,300 TEU or by 44.8% year on year.

Grain handling in the first 10 months of 2008 amounted to 4.495 million tons, slightly up from the same period last year. Notably, in the four months since grain export duty was abolished (from July to October), NCSP was able to fully offset grain volumes lost in the first half of the year. This became possible when new Novorossiysk Grain Terminal reached full capacity in August 2008 and began handling some 550,000 tons of grain per month.

Handling of petroleum products reached 8.998 mln. tons or rose 19.2% against same period last year, while their share in the total cargo turnover of the group grew from 11.5% to 13.2%. The 1.45 million tons increase in petroleum products offsets the slight drop of 1.1 million tons in crude oil handling.

NCSP continuously improves its cargo mix by increasing high-margin cargo handling while reducing the share of low-margin cargos like iron ore and ore concentrate (down 78.8%), and scrap metal (down 74.9%).

PJSC NCSP Operating Results for 10 Months 2008.