MOSCOW, March 3. /TASS/. The number of regular coastal voyages along the Northern Sea Route (NSR), launched in 2022, will double in the current year. Another four regular voyages will appear shortly, Deputy Minister for Development of the Far East and Arctic Gadzhimagomed Guseinov said making a presentation at the Arctic-2023 international conference on Thursday.
In 2022, two trips from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok served 8,500 tons of cargo.
"The plan for year 2023 is four voyages, 20,000 tons of cargo," the presentation read.
Coastal voyages are subsidized under the Development of the Northern Sea Route federal project, which is a part of a complex plan to upgrade and expand the backbone infrastructures.
"Last year, we launched the so-called marine commuter - regular coastal voyages. <…> These voyages have confirmed a high demand from investors, and we will develop them," the deputy minister said. "Last year, the shipments were served by one vessel (a cargo ship), and this year we plan to involve additional vessels, so that they could sail to small ports with small depths to serve the Northern Supplies (summer-time shipments of cargo to Northern regions for the coming winter)."
In 2022, Atomflot won the ministry's competition to serve subsidized return coastal voyages from the European part of the Russian Federation to the Far East. During the navigation in 2022, the Sevmorput nuclear-powered container ship made two round trips from ports in the European part of the Russian Federation to the Far Eastern ports. The cost to ship containers by rail between the European and the Far Eastern parts of the Russian Federation was used as an indicator to calculate an economically reasonable tariff for containers, including refrigerated containers with fish products, shipped along the Northern Sea Route.