"Redistribution of markets has taken place this year. We haven't conquered any new markets but we've squeezed players from certain countries, for example, Poland, Romania or Hungary, out of Western markets," Erlandas Mikenas told BNS.
As a result, cargo transportation volumes had increased, as had the haulers' revenue, he said. "Revenue has increased as have the distances of cargo transportation. However, profits have slumped. Competition is much stronger in Western markets therefore they are not that profitable," Mikenas said.
Meanwhile, total rail freight traffic declined between January and September due to an 18% fall in cargo transportation by rail to Russia's Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad.
"The main thing is the decline in the flows of the most expensive and important cargoes transported to that destination. In the nine-month period, the volumes of petroleum products transportation decreased by approximately 27%, of coal – by 18% and of food products – by 17%," Vidmantas Gudas, spokesman for the Lithuanian railway operator Lietuvos Gelezinkeliai (Lithuanian Railways), told BNS.
Both Mikenas and Gudas said that trends in the market remained broadly unchanged in the fourth quarter.
Even though Lietuvos Gelezinkeliai had managed to somewhat improve the results of cargo transportation to Kaliningrad in recent months [to narrow the y/y decline to 13.5% in 11 mo's], general trends in the railway transport segment remained challenging, Gudas said.
"Similar trends can also be observed in the neighboring countries. For example, rail freight traffic in Belarus fell by 7.3% in January through November, in Russia and Latvia – by 1.2%, in Ukraine – by 11% and in Estonia – by as much as 17%," he said.
Statistics Lithuania reported earlier on Tuesday that the total volume of goods moved by road transport increased by 0.6% in the nine months through September year-on-year to 45.967 million tons while the total rail freight traffic decreased by 2.2% to 35.259 million tons.
