June 17, 2021

JSC “Russian Railways” has provided figures on foreign trade traffic between Russia and Japan at the Russia-Japan Business Dialogue session held on June 5 at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. Bilateral traffic constitutes a significant part of the entire freight operations of Russian railways.

“In 2020, the volume of foreign trade traffic between Russia and Japan reached a record 50.2 million tons, which is 5.4% more than in 2019. Export of Russian coal to Japan of 48 million tons is almost a third of all traffic volumes on the Trans-Siberian Railway”, said Sergei Pavlov, First Deputy Director General of Russian Railways. In January-April this year, the growth of transit container traffic in communication with Japan amounted to 88% compared to the same period last year.

At the beginning of this year, a representative office of Russian Railways was opened in Tokyo. Its tasks include promoting the holding’s transport and logistics services, strengthening investment, technological and scientific and technical cooperation.

Development of the project of the end-to-end logistics service TransSiberian LandBridge is worth paying special attention. The project ensures the delivery of cargo from Japan to Europe twice as fast as by sea, without increasing its cost, S. Pavlov noted. In November-December 2020, within the framework of test container traffic on the Transsib, the dispatch of a full-set container train with Japanese cargo to European consignees was successfully implemented.

Source: https://seanews.ru