OREANDA-NEWS. September 01, 2014. During January-June 2014, the railway network belonging to Russian Railways transported 1.57 million Twenty-Foot Equivalent units (TEUs) of loaded and empty heavy-duty containers, an increase of 6.9% on the same period last year.

Growth was mainly achieved as a result of higher exports, which were up by 12.2%, domestic traffic, which saw a rise of 11.1%, and higher flows of laden transit traffic, which rose by 8.5%.

The major individual categories of freight transported in large containers were chemicals and soda, which accounted for 16.1% of the total, paper (12.3%), cars (12.2%) and general metal products and hardware (9.3%).

In the 1st half 2014, 1,053.5 thousand loaded heavy-duty TEU containers were shipped, up 6.5% compared to the same period last year.

Items shipped included:

chemicals and soda – 170,000 (+8.7% compared to January-June 2013);

vehicles – 128,400 (-5.1%);

paper – 129,100 (+20%);

general metal products and hardware – 98,200 (+4%);

manufactured goods – 73,500 (+10.2%);

machinery and equipment – 66,700 (+3.2%);

timber – 65,700 (+17.8%);

foodstuffs – 42,600 (+0.2%);

non-ferrous metals – 45,600 (+0.6%);

other items and assemblies – 42,400 (+5.4%);

construction materials – 40,800 (+15.2%);

ferrous metals – 40,300 (-0.5%);

oil products – 36,600 (+1.9%);

miscellaneous – 73,500 (+7%).

Compared with pre-crisis period during the first half of 2008, the transportation of heavy-duty containers in all directions increased by 32.2%.