The Russian ports achieved a record high growth rate last year, mainly driven by grain transshipment. Throughput grew about 35 % with over 47 million tons handled by Russian ports in 2017 compared with 35.553 million tons in previous year.    

Grain throughput at Russian ports hit the highest growth rate of all the commodities last year following the record harvest, the Russian transport ministry said. Throughput grew 34.7% with 47.879 million tons handled by Russian ports in 2017 compared with 35.553 million tons in 2016, S&P Global Platts reported.The growth was mainly driven by grain transshipment. Russia harvested 139.3 million tons of grain last year, 14.7 million tons higher on the year, beating 1978’s record harvest of 127 million tons. The main bulk of the volumes handled by ports — 42.608 million tons — headed to export, up 29.5% on the year. In 2016, 32.905 million tons of grain was exported. In late November, Russia’s agriculture minister Alexander Tkachev said Russia was set to export around 45 million tons of grains in the 2017-18 marketing year, of which 35 million mt would be wheat.In port throughput, grain was followed by coal and coke, whose throughput grew 13.4% to 154.476 million tons — of which 152.581 million tons was exported. Crude oil throughput rose 11.1% to 253.226 million tons, of which 177.377 million tons went for export — up 4.4% on the year.