OREANDA-NEWS. April 21, 2009. JSC “TransContainer” handled 300,000 TEU of regional and global container volumes carried on container flat cars in Q1 2009, down 12% compared with the same period last year, reported Peter Baskakov, CEO of JSC “TransContainer”, during the phone conference meeting with the heads of the company’s subsidiaries.

The CEO of JSC “TransContainer also added that other container operators carried 145,000 TEU on container flat cars, down 36% from the last year’s figure.

“Although the demand for container shipping has decreased dramatically, the Q1 performance is in general satisfactory. JSC “TransContainer” accounts for 67% of the container freight market, up from 60%”, stressed Peter Baskakov.

The CEO of JSC “TransContainer” said, the quarterly month-on-month dynamics of container and flat car shipments suggested that the Russian industry cheered up a bit. Meanwhile, despite the stable month-on-month growth of shipment volumes, the past year’s level was beyond the reach.

“Given the waning container operations, it is very important to win the customers, who will provide non-container cargoes to be shipped by the flat cars of JSC “TransContainer”. Over 800 flat cars were loaded with such cargoes in Q1 2009. Shipping of cars and pipes are on top of demand”, told Peter Baskakov.

The company obtained another 400 40-feet containers and 100 80-feet flat cars in Q1 2009. “Alongside with extension of container and flat car fleet, we deem short-term custody as one more top paragraph in our investment program for 2009”, said Peter Baskakov.

JSC TransContainer had been aggressively developing regional and global container train shipping throughout Q1 2009. Thus, 54 trains carrying component parts for Volkswagen cars traveled from Brest to Kaluga-1. The speed of operations on the territory of Russia doubled and reached 971 km per 24 hours versus the past year. The average delivery time has got almost twice as shorter.

The company also teamed up with the Far East Land Bridge Ltd. for a promising transit container traffic project. In the first three month there were 4 trains heading for Batevo from Zabaikalsk with the average speed of over 1000 km per 24 hours across the Russian territory.

As part of the efforts to develop the Transsib in 7Days technology JSC “TransContainer launched the first container train on Nakhodka-Vostochnaya - Bekasovo rout of the Moscow railway. The speed of the train is 1234 km per 24 hours. To the present day the rout has already been used by three trains.