On Friday evening, the strike of Finnish port workers brought 930 Japanese passenger cars heading for Russia to the storage yard of Esteve Terminal, a stevedore company operating at the Paldiski South Harbour.

Üllar Raad, Chairman of the Management Board of Esteve Terminal OÜ, operating in the business of stevedore services (loading and unloading ships), said that the strike of Finnish port workers provides the Estonians with unique opportunity to show their best qualities and maybe even snatch some work from the Finns in the future.

“We have laboured hard for several years to get this opportunity,” said Raad. “We have presented ourselves in shipping and car companies and have explained that transport of cars to Russia through Estonia would be significantly cheaper and faster.”

Raad also said that while nearly 250,000 cars go to Russia through Finland, the Estonian transit only comprises a few isolated instances. “16,000 cars were processed through the Paldiski South Harbour in the last year, but the majority were heading for Estonian and Lithuanian markets,” explained Raad. “We could say that 75 % of all new passenger cars sold in Estonia have been imported through us.”

However, the Finnish strike is an opportunity for significant growth. “This one ship will not generate much direct profit, but it could send a signal to the car manufacturer that we are prepared and able to do a proper job,” said Raad. “It enables us to break the ice.”

According to Raad, cars are a high-profile cargo. “This would also raise the overall image of Estonia, as we have been mainly known as a transit country for products with low level of added value, such as oil and mineral coal,” he said. “This would grant us access to more expensive and fancier line of work.”

Today, the cargo owner will tell us how to proceed – whether we should load the cars back on the ship and send them to Finland, or whether we can send the from Paldiski directly to Russia. “We make all efforts to get the right to transport them directly,” said Raad. But does Estonia have a sufficient number of trailers if the owner should decide to transport the cars to Russia directly from Paldiski?

“While the longest permitted trailer length in Estonia is 18.75 meters, Finland and Russia also permit trailers, which are by two meters longer,” spoke Raad. “Longer trailers would mean immediate reduction of the price, and the burning issue is now to get a special permit for longer trailers from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications.” According to Raad, this has been a subject of discussion for a long time, but now the issue has quickly become topical again.

Raad believes that the vessel arriving in Paldiski on Friday is the largest car carrier that has visited Estonia after the restoration of independence. The 12-deck ship can transport up to 4,500 cars.

According to Friday reports from Kauppalehti and YLE24, the Finnish port workers’ strike stopped the work in all major Finnish export ports, meaning that nearly the entire foreign trade was brought to a halt, because 80 % of the trade takes place by sea.

The Finnish Economic Association estimates that the strike reduces export revenue by 1.57 billion kroons in each day. The port workers of Helsinki, Turu and Kotka stopped their work on Thursday, when the collective agreement negotiations reached a deadlock, and they do not plan returning to work before Monday. The representatives of the employers have called the strike illegal. As a result of the strike, the forestry company UPM was forced to suspend the work of the magazine paper plant in Rauma.