Navigating Challenges: LTG Cargo's Strategic Growth Amidst Industry Turbulence

LTG Cargo is estimated to move 27.2 million tonnes of freight in 2023, 2.5 million tonnes more than planned after taking into account the ongoing projects to refocus its operations to the West, the focused work on sanction control, and the tightened rules on freight applications.

LTG Cargo's main cargo volume in 2023 was oil and oil products (9.4 million t), maintaining similar volumes to the previous year. Construction materials were actively transported, with around 5.5 million tonnes, and the volumes of agricultural products increased (4.7 million tonnes). LTG Cargo transported around one-third more of these products in 2023 than in 2022.

"After the turbulence in the sector in recent years, freight flows have stabilized, we have responded flexibly to changes and customer needs, and we have focused on renewing our long-term strategy, which will allow us to grow over the next five years, to expand transport volumes and to focus even more on strengthening the relationship with our customers.

We continued to strengthen our intermodal focus: we developed the international route to Duisburg, introduced a new route to Slavkov, and increased our volumes in Poland. In the coming years, Europe may reach a turning point in the greening of logistics, so we will continue to strengthen intermodal transport and continue our technical fleet renewal projects - first of all, the procurement of new electric locomotives and grain wagons," says Eglė Šimė, CEO of LTG Cargo.

Local transport continued to grow

In 2023, the company significantly increased its local transport volumes to around 7.7 million tonnes. LTG Cargo transported 20% more freight between Lithuanian railway stations than in 2022, with 9.1 million tonnes of freight to and from Klaipėda Seaport. Kaliningrad transit, counting all freight transported to and from Kaliningrad through the territory of Lithuania, regardless of its origin and destination, accounted for 20% less than in 2022 - around 6.5 million t of freight, with another 3.9 million t transported in the remaining directions.

Last year, LTG Cargo transported almost 36,000 tons of cargo from Ukraine to Klaipėda Seaport via Poland, and another 251,000 tons of cargo was transported to Ukraine via Poland, mostly oil and oil products (233,000 t).

The intermodal route to Duisburg in Germany, which has become the backbone of international traffic, handled a total of 11,018 TEU by the end of December. The Kaunas-Slavkov route, which started last year, transported 2,770 TEUs (TEUs - a twenty-foot equivalent unit).

Following the detection early last year of attempts by businesses to circumvent the sanctions control mechanisms, LTG Cargo has strengthened its checks on cargo from Belarus and other countries, expanded the scope of information collected from customers, and tightened the application rules. In 2023, as a result of these and other decisions, LTG Cargo rejected almost 4,000 freight applications and thus prevented the transport of more than 52,000 wagons with a wide range of cargo.

 

Source: LTG Cargo Press Release