We have previously issued repeated pleas to everybody to undertake maximum efforts to speed up the removal of import cargo from the terminals in St Petersburg.

Nevertheless, we must admit that the situation – much to our regret – has continued to deteriorate and by now has reached a level where we are forced to initiate some of the steps announced earlier.

The operational restraints in St Petersburg have such a severe impact on our production, including vessel scheduling and utilisation, that Unifeeder cannot continue unilaterally coping with the financial consequences.

At the same time we feel it necessary to undertake further steps to facilitate and support actions taken to achieve the above faster removal, consequently signalling that containers resting well above the average number of days in the terminals are the main cause of the present problems.

Finally, Unifeeder have also been looking at various administrative routines and believe to have ascertained a certain streamlining potential for the import documentation for St Petersburg. We therefore ask for the active co-operation of our customers to achieve this streamlining, letting the few containers that need special and/or different treatment carry the burdens themselves

In detail, our actions will be as follows:

St Petersburg temporary import emergency surcharge

With effect from 01.03.2007, Unifeeder will introduce a temporary import emergency surcharge for traffics into St Petersburg of

EUR 75 per TEU for dry containers
EUR 100 per TEU for reefer containers

As also realised by various liner forums, since we are not in a position to avoid significant, abnormal delays, days of sudden idling and sub-optimal utilisation of vessels because of terminal import restrictions, the financial consequences have reached an emergency stage where we are forced to request our customers to participate in covering the costs.

The surcharge will be invoiced together with the normal sea freight.

St Petersburg long-standing storage fees

With effect from 01.03.2007 Unifeeder will introduce the following “long-standing storage fees” to facilitate a faster removal of already arrived import containers to St Petersburg, leaving it up to the consignees of the containers themselves to safeguard that if the average storage time is kept, which should be in the mutual interest of us all, no extra charges will be applicable.

However, if import containers are stored for more than 10 days, a one-off fee of EUR 150 per container will be applicable

• If storage also exceeds 20 days, another one-off time fee of EUR 150 per container will be applicable
  
• For every 10 extra storage days exceeding 20, an additional fee of EUR 150 per container will be applicable

The fee(s) will be invoiced locally in St Petersburg to the party to whom the container will be finally released.

We would like to repeat that the fastest possible removal of import containers out of the scarce import allotments in St Petersburg will be the main contributor to limiting all other extra costs for all participants and to maximising the possibilities of new import cargo moving into St Petersburg.

St Petersburg import documentation corrections

Due to the specific nature of the customs legislation in the Russian Federation it is of advantage to the onwards customs clearance process that the import documentation is as accurate as possible from the very beginning and that it is undergoing no changes and/or corrections after release to the customs authorities.

To speed up the process, Unifeeder has for a long time transmitted all documentation to St Petersburg by EDI and pre-issued arrival notices with full bill of lading details to the consignees in Russia, enabling them to safeguard that all details are 100 pct correct before the final documentation has been made.

Nevertheless, and despite the above tools being available, we believe that we still face too many documentation corrections too late, which could ultimately lead to import containers resting too long awaiting customs clearance and thus occupying the space for new import containers not having the same documentation problems.

Therefore, as from 01.03.2007 Unifeeder will introduce the following deadlines for import documentation for St Petersburg:

• Full documentation details must be available to Unifeeder in the POL minimum 48 hrs before the specific vessel starts operations at its first terminal in the POL.
  
• Unifeeder will release arrival notices/”pre bills of lading” to the consignees in Russia when the specific vessel starts operations at its first terminal in the POL, at the latest.
  
• Any request for corrections to documentation must be presented to Unifeeder not later than 24 hrs after the issuing of arrival notices/”pre bills of lading”.
  
• Should the request for corrections be received by Unifeeder later than the above, Unifeeder will invoice the party to whom the container will be finally released with a fee of EUR 25 per correction request.

The above steps should be seen as temporary initiatives taken by Unifeeder solely as a consequence of the present situation in the St Petersburg traffics.

We are specifically aiming at facilitating the faster removal of already arrived import containers by assisting the market participants in realising the benefits of speeding up the process, and are sure that the mutual benefits of the tools will be experienced as by far exceeding the short term costs of same.