Ukraine-based Informall Business Group in its latest Black Sea Container Market review reports a rise of 8.70% in loaded containers handling in the Black Sea container ports of Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Russia and Georgia in 2018 as compared to 2017.
Black Sea container terminals of the five countries handled 2927016 TEU in 2018, including empty containers, excluding transshipment. This review observes only full containers of the region – 2188153 TEU.
In 2018, there was a laden container turnover increase in all countries of the Black Sea region. The highest growth was achieved by Ukraine and Georgia – 18,99% and 14,64%. At the same time, Bulgaria, Russia and Romania have achieved 4,52%, 3,94% and 0,35% growth of laden container turnover respectively.
During this period, 56,63% of laden containers were imported, with 43,37% of the volume being exported. It is estimated that laden container share was 74,76% and empty container share was 25,24%.
Export volumes from the aforementioned countries increased by 3,12% compared to 2017. Ukraine achieved significant growth of export volume – 14,89%. Romania suffered 9,85% decrease of laden export volume, while Georgia, Russia and Bulgaria achieved growth of 6,56%, 5,09% and 1,54 respectively.
The top-five container terminals of the region in 2018 changed their positions in total volumes handled: DPW (Constanta, Romania) and APMT Poti (Georgia) secured their top positions. CTO (Odessa, Ukraine) moved to the third position, while NUTEP (Novorossiysk, Russia) shifted down to the fourth place.
As for the leading carriers of the region, MAERSK still was a leader; while COSCOCS overcame ARKAS and became third largest carrier of the region. For the first time in recent years, ZIM became TOP-5 carrier at the Black Sea. TOP-5 carriers of the region were MAERSK, MSC, COSCOCS, ARKAS and ZIM. In total, these carriers controlled 71,83% of this market.