A stopover in the north?
Another staging post for transhipments on the Northeast Passage? Russia has been propagating the Northern Sea Route for a long time. Some carriers, including CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd, have decided against. Russia is nevertheless pushing ahead with it by expanding regional hubs in the Pacific Ocean and the White Sea.
Russia is planning to establish new transhipment points on the controversial Northern Sea Route, which forms a portion of the Northeast Passage. Although ships on this route between the Far East and Europe only have to cover 5,600 km, just under half the distance compared to the Suez route, large shipping lines such as CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd already decided against it in 2019, on account of ecological, nautical and political risks.
Now, in addition to facilities in Vladivostok, a new transhipment hub is set to be built on the route, near Murmansk. Russia’s Far East and Arctic Development Corporation (FEDC) and the logistics integrator Rusatom Cargo, part of Rosatom, recently signed an agreement to cooperate on the construction of the new so-called ‘Western Transport and Logistics Hub’ (Whub). The FEDC is a federal development institute established by Russia in 2015 to promote ongoing investment efforts in Russia’s far eastern and Arctic regions.
This new ‘Whub’, the counterpart to a similar centre already operational in Vladivostok, will be located in the city of Belokamenka, which is in the Murmansk region. It will be home to a fleet of ice-class containerships.
Russia has big plans for the project, which also includes the first regular container line to operate on the Northern Sea Route linking the eastern and western parts of the Eurasian landmass. According to FEDC director general Nikolay Zapryagaev the hub has been designed as “the infrastructural backbone of an Arctic container line project called Eurasian Container Transit (EACT).”
The terminal will have two deep-water berths for maritime vessels, each with a capacity to handle around 6,000 teu annually, as well as approximately 10 million t of cargo.