1. What is your assessment of the prevailing sentiment on Russia’s container market?
One of the Price Benchmark Centre’s (PBC) latest reports on the Russian container market is titled «September of Unmet Expectations,» which reflects the fact that the low season in container shipping has ended, but the usual for the early autumn surge in cargo flow from China to Russia failed to materialised. Carriers look forward to seeing the market revive and started gradually raising rates on certain sea and rail services in August-September. However, a portion of ongoing tariff increases is artificial (due to reduced carrying capacity), while cargo flows are recovering at a low pace. Nevertheless, there are drivers that will send market and freight rates higher. They include the approaching high New Year season, an increase in traffic due to deferred demand for consumer good shipments in the wake of the Bank of Russia easing its monetary policy, and possible geopolitical flare-ups or even infrastructure challenges that often constrain rail container transport.
The container market players continue to develop the logistics infrastructure and see both the necessity and the demand for opening new routes and services, particularly with destinations in Africa and Latin America. At the same time, the market participants are hoping for a quick recovery in import volumes from China, although I would be cautious with such forecasts. In any case, the PBC continues to regularly track rail and sea container shipment rates, container allocation, and leasing of fitting platforms and containerships, in other words, indicators that make it possible to come up with up-to-the-minute assessments of the state of the transport and logistics market, as well as that of the Russian economy and foreign trade more generally, and that also serve as leading indicators for conducting stress tests and analysis.
2. What trends did you spot on the Russian container market this year? How and why are rail container transport rates changing?
We have been living amid a controlled slowdown of the Russian economy for almost all of this year, and transport market participants and other economic agents can sense its effects. The container market has cooled off as well, and as of the end of 2025, for the first time in the past 10 years, the Russian Railways’ container shipments will see a drop year-on-year. The PBC is primarily focusing on the import volume drop: the household consumer demand is low, warehouses remain overstocked, and importers are not motivated to increase inventories. As a result, operators have a surplus of carrying capacity, sea lines are cutting vessel calls at the Russian ports, and in July 2025 the PBC index for 40-foot container rail transport from Xi’an to Moscow fell to its lowest in five years at $3,200.
That said the current situation has many positive aspects to it. The main beneficiaries include importers and end consumers of Chinese goods: for them, the delivery costs have almost halved compared with the logistics prices in late 2024. The fall in import volumes has made managing container fleets easier for the operators: imbalances in cargo flows between China and Russia have smoothed out, the containers no longer build up at Russian terminals, and there is no longer need to provide massive subsidies to Russian exporters for returning containers to China. In the autumn of 2024, extra payments to shippers for using containers on the Moscow-Shanghai route exceeded $2,000, whereas in August 2025 they dropped to $500.
The export and domestic container shipment situation changed this year as well. With a solid cargo base and strong external demand, container exports are up, but are under pressure due to an abrupt strengthening of the rouble exchange rate. Meanwhile, domestic container traffic is insufficient, and east-bound shipments of mineral and construction cargoes from central regions are declining.
3. Are you observing a similar situation on the maritime container transport market?
The summer and the early autumn of 2025 were marked by mixed trends. Global freight rates were highly volatile: a sharp rise in tariffs and shipments from China to the United States and Europe was quickly followed by a market cool-off amid geopolitical uncertainty. Meanwhile, transport volumes remain low in Russia. Carriers are cutting voyages to Russia, re-directing ships to more lucrative routes. For example, a Chinese operator removed two vessels from its schedule of voyages to St Petersburg. This is holding back a fall in rates, but does not help grow cargo volumes.
