Assessment of the economic costs of shippers for transporting coal from Russia to China using the “railway – river – sea” scheme in comparison with traditional supply chains

As a result of the reorientation of freight flows to the east and south, the problem of insufficient throughput capacity arose on the Eastern range of Russian railways. In addition, a number of eastern ports and border crossings have a problem of low technical equipment. These facts indicate that at the moment the country’s transport system is not able to fully cope with the increased volume of cargo transportation, as a result of which the management of the Russian Railways company and the Government of the Russian Federation are introducing restrictions on the transportation of certain categories of cargo, as well as the priority of one cargo over another.
For a long time, coal occupied the leading position in terms of transportation volumes, but now consumer goods are coming to the fore to meet the needs of the population. The coal sector, as well as related sectors of the economy, suffered large financial losses: mining enterprises limited daily loading volumes due to untimely removal of cargo, as a result of which all participants in the transportation process suffered – clients, transport companies, rolling stock operators, Russian Railways, port terminals and coal mining enterprises.
The purpose of this study was to compare the economic costs of shippers when transporting along established delivery routes, as well as along the direction that is rapidly developing today – along the Northern Sea Route.
To achieve this goal, it is necessary to analyze the relevance of transportation of hard coal to China, calculate the economic costs of delivering cargo according to the traditional and multi-modal scheme through the Northern Sea Route, and based on the calculation, draw a conclusion about the feasibility of transportation using a new technology for the shipper.
As a result of the study, it was established that transportation of coal using the “railway – river – sea” scheme via the Northern Sea Route is currently not attractive for the shipper compared to traditional routes due to the large over-payment (2.6 times).

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