INFUTURE project partners gathered January 28th in Lappeenranta with interested stakeholders presenting Finnish and Russian cargo owners and shipowners to discuss the possibilities to access the Russian inland waterway system with a vessel operating under Finnish flag or some other than Russian flag.
The aim within the frames of the INFUTURE project, financed from the South-East Finland - Russia CBC Programme 2014-2020, is to develop the inland waterway communication between Finland and Russian. One concrete task is to try accomplish a pilot with a cargo vessel from Saimaa to Lake Ladoga Lake Onego in Russia.
Pekka Koskinen, the vice chairman of the Finnish Waterway Association and the Chairman of the INFUTURE Steering Group gave the overview on cargo flows at the Saimaa and Baltic Sea area. There are around 250 Russian cargo vessels annually visiting the Finnish Inland Waterways
Anatoly Burkov, Associate Professor from the Admiral Makarov State University of Maritime and Inland Shipping presented the process for receiving the access, which consists of many phases.
This kind of co-operation would generate more traffic to the inland waterways between Finland and Russian. Especially wood industry is interested in this opportunity.
Discussions on carrying out the pilot has been started and the parties to participate the pilot have been involved in the discussion and the preparations will be started soon. From the Russian side the possible ports for this pilot would be Petrozavodsk in Karelia, Podporozhsky at the Lake Syväri, St.Petersburg and Cherepovets at the Vologda Oblast.
