Amirabad Port in the northern Mazandaran Province handled 1.56 million tons of goods during the first half of the current Iranian year (March 21-Sept. 22), registering a 4% rise in throughput compared with the corresponding period of last year, according to a local official.
“The port accounted for 58% of the total loading and unloading of Iran’s northern ports during the period under review,” director general of Amirabad Ports and Maritime Organization, Mohammad Ali Asl-Saeedipour was also quoted as saying by IRIB News.
The official added that container loading and unloading of the port stood at 2,483 TEUs, registering a 57% rise compared with the similar period of last year.
Mazandaran has three ports, namely Amirabad, Noshahr and Fereydounkenar, with the first being the most active in the region.
Amirabad is the largest port facility on the Caspian shore and the third largest in Iran.
“Being located along the International North-South Transportation Corridor makes transportation through Amirabad Port safe, attractive, cost-effective and much faster than the alternative routes.”
A total of 480,684 tons of goods were exported from Amirabad to member countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States during the same, the official said earlier.
Transits through the port, he added, experienced a 105% rise compared with the corresponding period of last year.
Underutilized
The combined capacity of Iran’s five Caspian ports, namely Anzali, Nowshahr, Fereydounkenar, Astara and Amirabad, is at 35 million tons, accounting for only about 13% of the total capacity of Iranian ports, according to Jalil Eslami, the deputy head of Ports and Maritime Organization of Iran.
Ali Chagharvand, director of Plan Management, Planning and Monitoring Department of Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture, says poor export infrastructures and lack of adequate equipment are to blame for the low shipping traffic of northern Iranian ports and freight forwarding companies, as well as traders’ reluctance to use their services,” Ali Chagharvand, director of Plan Management, Planning and Monitoring Department of Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture, wrote for Tasnim News Agency.
"Traders and transportation companies do not avail themselves of the numerous advantages of Iran’s northern ports that are in recession. Economic players believe that they are uneconomical. This is while by removing obstacles, freight transportation and trade through northern ports can become a viable alternative to other transit routes and even southern ports,” he said.
According to the official, in the fiscal 2020-21, a meager 5-6 tons of the overall capacity of northern ports were used, as demand for their services has declined in recent years.
"Nowshahr Port has considerable advantages, including its proximity to the capital city and major commercial and industrial centers, easy access to the consumer markets of Central Asia and Eastern Europe, access to airport, availability of facilities for storage and movement of commercial goods, petroleum products and solid bulk cargo, having exclusive warehouses and special facilities for export and transit, as well as direct connection through pipelines to Chalous oil reservoirs. However, due to several reasons, the port’s shipping traffic is even lower than that of Amirabad Port,” he said.
INSTC to Help Promote Northern Ports
The operationalization of the International North-South Transportation Corridor could give impetus to Iran’s northern ports.
INSTC is a major transit route designed to facilitate the transportation of goods from Mumbai in India to Helsinki in Finland, using Iranian ports and railroads, which the Islamic Republic plans to connect to those of Azerbaijan and Russia.
The corridor connects Iran with Russia’s Baltic ports and give Russia rail connectivity to both the Persian Gulf and the Indian rail network.
This means goods can be carried from Mumbai to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas and further to Baku. They could then pass across the Russian border into Astrakhan before proceeding to Moscow and St. Petersburg, before entering Europe.
INSTC would substantially cut the travel time for everything from Asian consumer goods to Central Eurasia’s natural resources to advanced European exports.
Armenia and Iran are implementing projects of regional significance, including the geopolitically important project connecting the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea.
Iran and Russia have agreed on details of their plan to transit 10 million tons of goods along the International North South Transit Corridor.
The agreement was made during a meeting of the two side’s transportation officials in Moscow on June 28 and 29.
IRISL earlier piloted multimodal transit of cargo along the INSTC carrying goods from Russia to India, according to the head of Solaynka Port in Russia’s city of Astrakhan.
“The consignments are two 40-feet containers of wood laminates weighing a total of 41 tons. The containers were loaded at St. Petersburg and are heading toward Astrakhan where they will be loaded again at Solyanka Port. They will then traverse the Caspian Sea to reach Iran’s Anzali Port where they are scheduled to be transported to Bandar Abbas port city in the south of the country via trucks. The two containers will then be dispatched to Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s largest container port,” Dariush Jamali was also quoted as saying by IRNA.
The official estimated that the transit of this first trial consignment, as part of collaboration between the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Line Group’s representative logistic companies in Russia and India, would take less than 25 days.
“The shipments will be using one-way bill along their journey. We hope that this first transit on the INSTC will lead to considerable revenues and a boost in transit and logistics in Iran, Russia and India.”
Solyanka is one of the 15 ports located in Astrakhan’s Economic zone and is considered the busiest of them all. Some 53% of Solyanka Port’s shares belong to Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Line Group.
The Russian port of Astrakhan is a hub for commercial activities of nearly 200 Iranian firms making the port the largest center of Iranians’ economic activities in Russia.
Iran, Azerbaijan and Russia signed a declaration at the end of the first trilateral meeting on the development of the North-South international transport corridor in Baku last month.
The signatories are Azerbaijani Deputy Prime Minister Shahin Mustafayev, his Russian counterpart Alexander Novak, and Iranian Minister of Roads and Urban Development Rostam Qasemi, Interfax reported.
The two sides said they would draft an agreement on building the Rasht-Astara rail line in the Iranian territory within a month and would start to discuss project details by the end of this year.
They declared the readiness for cooperation to fully unlock the transport potential of the corridor and thus achieve the goal of 30 million tons of cargo to be annually transported via the three states by 2030.
There is also an agreement to set up a joint working group to facilitate transit procedures. The group will hold its inaugural meeting within a month.
Russian Railways is expecting a decision soon on completing a section of the Rasht-Astara railroad in Iran, Sergei Pavlov, first deputy head of the company, said on Friday during the Made in Russia 2022 international export forum.
"Rasht-Astara is a serious obstacle today for connecting the railroad [North-South ITC] into a single network," Pavlov said, noting that the RZD-Logistics subsidiary currently uses the route for multimodal transportation, Interfax reported.
"We are currently holding very intensive negotiations with the Iranian side and with the Azerbaijani side in order to launch the route," Pavlov said.
"I am certain that we will be able to hear positive news very soon, because all the participants, all the governments and the ministries of transportation and rail organizations are working toward the single goal of launching the railroad as soon as possible," Pavlov added.
