In 2023 LTG Cargo, the freight transportation subsidiary of the LTG Group, transported 27.2 million tonnes of freight – 2.5 million tonnes more than planned, considering the ongoing projects on shifting activities to the West, the targeted work to ensure control of sanctions and the tightening of the rules on freight transport applications.
In 2023 LTG Cargo mainly transported oil and oil products (9.4 million tonnes), i.e. the company maintained similar freight volumes as in the previous year. Construction materials were actively transported with around 5.5 million tonnes, while transport volumes of agricultural products increased (4.7 million tonnes). In 2023, compared to 2022, LTG Cargo transported about one-third more of these products.
“After the turbulent recent years in the sector, freight flows have stabilised, we responded flexibly to changes and customer needs, and focused on updating our long-term strategy, which will allow the company to grow over several 5-year periods, to expand its transport volumes and to focus even more on strengthening the relationship with our customers.
We continued actions to strengthen the intermodal freight trend: the development of the international route to Duisburg, the introduction of a new destination to Slavkov and the increase in our transport volumes in Poland. In the upcoming years, Europe may reach a turning point in enhancing green logistics, which is why we will continue to reinforce the intermodal transport and to pursue projects to upgrade our technical fleet, notably the public procurement of new electric locomotives and wagons for grain transportaion,” says Eglė Šimė, CEO of LTG Cargo.
Local transport continued to grow
In 2023, the company significantly increased its local transport volumes to about 7.7 million tonnes. LTG Cargo transported by 20% more freight than in 2022. Freight transport to and from Klaipėda Seaport amounted to 9.1 million tonnes. Taking into account all freight transported to and from Kaliningrad through the territory of Lithuania, regardless of their point of origin and point of destination, the volume of freight transported by Kaliningrad transit is lower than in 2022 by 20% – about 6.5 million tonnes; another 3.9 million tonnes were transported in the remaining directions.
Last year, LTG Cargo transported almost 36,000 tonnes of cargo from Ukraine via Poland to Klaipėda seaport, while another 251,000 tonnes of freight were transported to Ukraine via Poland – mainly oil and oil products (233,000 tonnes).
By end-December, 11,018 TEUs in total were carried via the intermodal route to Duisburg in Germany, which has become the backbone of the international freight transport. 2,770 TEUs (TEU – twenty-foot equivalent unit) were transported by Kaunas–Slavkov route launched last year.
It should be noted that in 2023 LTG Cargo continued to increase its business resilience and further tightened its freight transport controls.
After detecting attempts by businesses to circumvent the sanctions control mechanisms at the beginning of the last year, LTG Group has made more stringent its checks on freight from Belarus and other countries, expanded the scope of information collected from customers, and tightened the rules for submitting applications. In 2023, LTG Cargo rejected almost 4,000 freight transport applications as a result of these on other decisions, and thus did not transport more than 52,000 wagons with various types of freight.
