At the 7th Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russian president Vladimir Putin announced the opening of the Zabaikalsky Grain Terminal via videoconference.
The terminal will allow for efficient transhipment of grains to the Chinese land port of Manzhouli in Inner Mongolia.
The facility has a throughput capacity of 8 million tons of year, has storage capacity of 80k tons, and is capable of receiving and processing shuttle trains of up to 71 Russian grain railcar or 84 Chinese railcars.
In 2021, Manzhouli imported 154k tons of Russian agricultural products, with the largest portion being 42k tons of rapeseed oil.
The opening of this new facility could increase China’s imports of Russian grains. The director of the grain terminal said Russian grains from the Urals, Siberia, or Far East could reach two or three weeks which is dramatically faster than current ocean shipping times.
The land port at Manzhouli had shut down in early December 2021 due to Covid outbreak and was closed for over a month before re-opening in January 2022.