Russian coal exporters buying own rail wagons

Russian coal exporters are scrambling to buy thousands of rail wagons because a chronic shortage of those provided by state rail monopoly RZhD has disrupted exports, an official at major exporter KRUTrade said.

“The rail wagon shortage is the biggest problem facing Russian coal exporters, aside from port capacity restrictions,” he said on Tuesday, on the sidelines of a McCloskey coal conference in New Delhi.
“The industry needs about 22,000 wagons to flow smoothly but there are probably only about 17,000 in use,” he said.

Many of RZhD’s wagons are decades old and in such poor condition that they are shaken apart, shedding chunks of metal into their coal cargoes — the source of contamination found in uncleaned Russian coal.

Wagons are not being replaced as fast as RZhD scraps them.

A year ago, exporters were struggling with the shortage but said it was uneconomic to buy wagons because they would have to travel without cargo on one leg of the journey, inflating costs.

The wagon shortage has worsened dramatically since then.

“This is the worst it’s ever been,” another major exporter said.

Exporters now feel they have little choice but to buy their own wagons if that means they can move enough coal to ports to make shipments to customers on time.

Reuters