Maersk opens an Inland Container Depot at Novorossiysk, Russia

August 22 2021 Print This Article

Novorossiysk is the largest port on the Black Sea. Connected by rail and highways to the main industrial and population centers of Russia, Transcaucasia, and Central Asia, Novorossiysk is one of the biggest export hubs and gateways in Russia, serving the entire country´s geography.

Located 10 kilometers away from the port, Maersk´s Inland Container Depot (ICD) operates two rail services total 570m, and it is equipped with fertilizers, liquid cargoes as well as general and palletized cargo handling facilities.

“We’re excited about adding more Russian supply chain distribution capacity and expertise at a time when customers are looking to find new ways to keep pace with consumer demand and to be more sustainable with their carbon emissions. The logistics goal of this facility is to allow customers more time and flexibility in decision-making. They can now easily make destination routing decisions upon arrival at the discharge port instead of at origin. Operating Inland Services in Novorossiysk allows Maersk to offer differentiated and unique End-to-End integrated solutions to its customers, from stuffing at the origin until delivering at overseas destinations”

Zsolt Katona, Head of Maersk Eastern Europe

The facility is a key pivot point in supply chain management. Spread across three hectares, it has capacity to store 1.500 containers (TEUs) and it is expected an annual turnover of 25.000 containers.

“We work through all Russian ports and handle almost one million tons of exports in containers annually. Novorossiysk is one of the most important hubs, and we experience a lot of complexity there to accommodate our growing volumes and get reliable suppliers. Maersk is our top partner in Ocean and we strongly believe that expansion of Maersk into inland logistics will give us a unique opportunity to improve the quality of operations and make it more predictable. By getting one-stop-shop solution from Maersk we would be able to reduce workload and, consequently, add transparency and efficiency to processes to focus on trading our goods to wider geographies instead”

Ludvig Tarkhanyan, Managing Director at Europack LLC

The new facility reflects Maersk’s strategic plan to grow logistics and services capabilities for customers’ supply chains by adding more capacity and flexibility for decision-making.

“Contract Logistics is one of the key product families enabling Maersk to become the global integrator of container logistics. Depots are “logistic shopping malls,” providing clients with a unique value proposition and complex logistics solutions such as container preparation, container stuffing from conventional rail wagons, trucking, storage facilities and others. Russia is one of the largest global exporters of bulk commodities, whilst only a fraction of it is being exported in containers – est. 6% of total export volumes in 2020 moved in containers (heavily lagging European/mature regions). To enable the fast-growing export market, depots are a key component for customers’ supply chain to convert bulk cargo into containers and export further to overseas regions,” highlights Zsolt Katona.

Maersk Depots operates 11 facilities in Europe out of 74 owned globally, and it is designed to offer a simple, seamless end-to-end customer experience.