The Federal State Budgetary Institution "GlavSevmorput" has summarized its work over two years to control the Northern Sea Route (NSR). By order of the Russian government, it provides icebreaker support for ships, monitors their movement, and issues permits for ships to pass through the NSR.
Since August 1, 2022, in the NSR water area:
- 2603 voyages were carried out;
- more than 2300 icebreaker support operations were organized;
- about 2400 navigation permits were issued;
- a convenient mechanism for submitting applications for ships to navigate in the NSR water area through the State Services portal was introduced;
- emergencies were avoided — there have been no emergencies on the Northern Sea Route in two years.
Also, specialists from "GlavSevmorput" developed and launched a unique deep-water route that allowed Capesize vessels to transit through the NSR water area. Capesize (translated from English cape — "cape", size — "size", editor's note) — large vessels with a deadweight of over 150 thousand tons. They carry coal, ore and other similar heavy cargo, and require separate deep-water terminals to work with them. It is difficult for such vessels to pass through the Suez and Panama Canals, and they require alternative routes.
In September 2023, the dry cargo ship Gingo became the first conventional non-ice class Capesize dry cargo ship to be escorted by Russian icebreakers along the NSR from Murmansk to the east to China. The journey took only 13 days, which turned out to be twice as fast as through the Suez Canal.
Debutante Gingo delivered 164,600 tons of iron ore concentrate to China, and became a record holder for the transportation of a one-time volume of cargo that has ever been transported along the NSR. Now this route is regularly used for the passage of ships of this type.
The Northern Sea Route is becoming increasingly popular outside of Russia. At the end of 2023, international transit along the NSR exceeded 2 million tons of cargo.
The number of customers of the information and navigation support service for voyages in the NSR water area has almost doubled in two years. If in 2023 we had 9 contracts with customers, then in 2024 – already 16, and their number continues to increase.
According to FSUE "Atomflot", a subsidiary of the Rosatom State Corporation, during the winter-spring navigation of 2024, Atomflot icebreakers provided 438 ship calls (during the same period in 2023 there were only 435). The total gross cargo capacity amounted to 50.4 million tons (48.6 million tons in the same period of 2023).
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