Russian companies and government officials are looking for new routes for crab exports, including the use of the Northern Sea Passage and new schemes involving air, auto, and rail transport.
In a speech at the Global Fishery Forum held in late September 2022 in St. Petersburg, Russia, Russian Federal Agency for Fisheries Deputy Head Khasan Likhov said there has been increased interest in using the Northern Sea Passage – a sea route through the Russian Arctic from the north to the country’s Far East. Likhov said that two cargo operations – a shipment of crab from the north to the east, and a shipment of pollock in the opposite direction – were successfully carried out in 2022.
In July 2022, Russian crab company Antey Sever– one of the largest catchers of crab in the country – faced a lack of demand for its crab harvested in the Barents Sea due to a U.S. ban on all seafood from Russia. The company was forced to quickly shift to Asian markets, mainly China, where crab consumption has been increasing.
As a result, the company has trialed shipping crab via the Northern Sea Passage to Asia. Sevmorput, a ship operated by Russian state-owned shipping company Atomflot, dispatched 670 metric tons (MT) of frozen crab from Murmansk to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, in the Kamchatka region in Russia’s Far East. At the port of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the crab was reloaded into containers to be further shipped to Asian markets via Vladivostok.
Antey CEO Yuri Bakalyar told Russian media the NSP is a very convenient route. The company is now considering shipping live crab – a sought-after product in Asia.
“Maybe we will rent Sevmorput with our containers or use our own vessels as they are dutifully equipped to guarantee required conditions for live species,” he told the TASS news agency.
Later, in August, Antey Sever tried a pilot multi-modal transportation of 8 MT of live opilio crab in two containers. In the first phase, the containers were hauled by trucks from Murmansk to special facilities built near Moscow’s airport Sheremetyevo. In the second phase, crabs were shipped by air to Asia.
Another route that Antey Sever tried was a transport route using only land-based transport. A total of 14 containers filled with frozen crab took 12 days to get from Murmansk to Vladivostok via truck, while 13 containers took 21 days to take rail to the same location.
While the company is testing new approaches to logistics, the Russian government is busy with establishing a sea container operator for NSP. According to a plan now being discussed at various government bodies, massive investments will be put into the NSP’s infrastructure including oil and gas terminals, satellite navigation, and building more than 150 ships – including container ships, rescuers, and icebreakers.
Likhov said that with proper infrastructure, reasonable freight rates, and convenient schedule, haulage of seafood in both directions will become a routine.
Photo courtesy of Andrei Stepanov/Shutterstock
