Freight transportation

GRI 3-3

Transportation and logistics services

The Company’s key priority in the freight transportation segment is to attract additional high‑margin cargo volumes and expand the range of logistics products. In order to deliver on these objectives, the Group launched the following services: Scheduled Freight Traffic, Freight Express, Modular Express, and SME Export Express.

Container solutions

In 2024, container transportation volumes exceeded the record figures of 2023 by 5.9% to reach 7.88 m TEU, with growth driven by domestic (+2.4%) and transit transportation (+52.4%) segments.

In 2024, transit containers transportation hit a milestone of over 1,299,900 TEU travelling through the Russian Railways network (including shipments under new logistics schemes), up 52.4% y‑o‑y.

Key projects in 2024

• The Company introduced a multimodal solution for a fast warehouse-to-warehouse delivery of commercial cargo from China to Russia, with a large domestic fashion retailer becoming the first customer to benefit from the service.The E2E solution comprises first mile goods consolidation in China, road transportation to the border Hunchun railway station, customs clearance, loading to postal cars, rail transportation to Moscow, and road delivery of fully cleared goods to the customer’s warehouse. The delivery time from Hunchun, China, to Moscow does not exceed two weeks. New cargo logistics solutions rely on innovative technologies to increase the weight and size of international cargo and accelerate the delivery. Russian Railways developed a dedicated end-to-end solution taking into account all handling operations for postal and luggage cars at Kamyshovaya and Ussuriysk stations.
• The Company offers SME Export Express, a service for containerised monthly shipments of mixed export cargoes for small and medium businesses from the Bely Rast terminal in the Moscow Region to China. The regular service enables the consolidation of mixed cargoes from Northwestern, Central and Volga federal districts at the Bely Rast container terminal to be shipped to China by a regular container trains. The Company is expanding service geography and the range of export goods. On top of that, the Company created synergy between Agroexpress and our SME Export Express service by integrating autonomous refrigerated containers of agricultural products from domestic exporters into the service’s container trains.

RoLa solutions

In 2024, the Company doubled the share of piggyback cars in container trains running with fixed departure and arrival times along the looped Moscow–Vladivostok–Moscow route, which significantly reduced delivery time and enhanced the competitiveness of RoLa services compared to road transportation.

Regular RoLa services provided along the Northern Railway make the far‑flung parts of the Extreme North where there is no regular road transportation more accessible.

Improving the quality of transportation services

Sales offices

The Company keeps expanding the network of sales offices whose key feature is a proactive approach to customer relations and the use of cutting edge information and sales technologies based on an automated CRM solution for freight transportation.

The Company created a network of 89 advanced sales offices across Russia, from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok.

Managing the terminal and warehouse infrastructure

The Company’s terminal and warehouse infrastructure includes 152 container terminals, including 74 used to marshal container trains. In 2024, container terminals dispatched 2,383 trains and handled some 994,000 TEU.

The Company promoted its quick customer response service engaging mobile service teams to load and unload small batches in public areas at Russian Railways stations (outside main cargo terminals) or using customer infrastructure.

Multimodal transportation and logistics hubs

The Company’s investment programme includes 25 projects aimed at terminal expansion through 2030. The largest projects are already ongoing or will be kicked off as part of the initiative to create a network of transportation and logistics hubs implemented by the Russian Ministry of Transport under a subproject of the Transportation System Development government programme.

2024 highlights:

• a container site is set up at the Syktyvkar transportation and logistics hub (handling capacities increased from 67,700 to 116,700 TEU per year);
• main works are completed at the Ussuriysk and Nakhodka terminals and container shipments started to depart from Far Eastern ports (handling capacities increased from 14,600 to 40,600 and from 15,700 to 41,700 TEU per year respectively);
• additional screening infrastructure is built at the Naushki station (customs check points increased from 6 to 12);
• universal urban terminals were built at New Chara (handling capacities increased from 5,100 to 14,100 TEU per year), Abakan (handling capacities increased from 7,900 to 17,300 TEU per year), Chelyabinsk Gruzovoy (handling capacities increased from 10,220 to 10,950 cars per year, warehousing capacities increased from 20.7 to 29.5 kt), and Grozny (handling capacities increased to 17,500 TEU per year, storage capacity of up to 500 TEU) stations.

A special attention is paid to developing the transportation and logistics infrastructure of the Central Transport Hub:

• the first container site is opened at the Southern Port transportation and logistics hub that can handle 110,000 TEU per year);
• the Company embarked on design works and the first stage of transferring the cargo terminal from the centre of Sergiyev Posad to the Naugolny station and building a universal urban terminal.

Environmental Calculator

Russian Railways attaches great importance to environmental issues, this is why we gave shippers an opportunity to calculate their environmental impact. The Company offered its customers the Environmental Calculator in their personal accounts. This tool helps to determine the extent to which GHG emissions are reduced if rail transportation is preferred for any given shipment. We also launched a meter telling customers how many trees they saved by switching to electronic workflow.

As a result, more than 90% of shippers chose to use electronic workflow. The Russian Railways website features an Environmental Memorandum and provides live updates on the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions year to date.