Timber exporters from Irkutsk are experiencing difficulties in shipping products to China

When interviewed by FederalPress, Yury Logachev, president of the regional Union of Timber Industrialists and Exporters, said that the problem had been persisting for several months.

“It leads to failures to fulfill contractual obligations, financial losses, decreased revenues and, therefore, taxes. Many companies had built terminals and other infrastructure facilities to handle containers for shipments to China, they had invested money, and this all turned out to be in low demand,” he added.

According to some estimates, about 50 trains cannot leave the stations in the region at the moment. The Union has sent an appeal to Igor Kobzev, Governor of the Irkutsk region, with a request to organize a meeting to address the issues of overcoming the current situation.

According to the information obtained by WhatWood Agency, there are indeed difficulties in shipping sawn timber and roundwood from Siberia to China. There is a certain tension in the border areas, stations do not manage to handle the traffic, which has limited departures and entries of trains both on the part of our country and on the part of China. It does not mean complete 100% suspension of deliveries: factories ship some batches by rail but not to the full extent. There is no talk about plant shutdowns neither. The cargo traffic and reception performance of Russian Railways and freight forwarders is limited due to the current technical and market conditions caused by the cumulative effect (the situation has been persisting since December 2020). However, this is by no means of political nature due to China’s refusal to accept Russian sawn timber.