Russian Railways JSC approved the project of establishment with FESCO the joint venture “Russian troika”.

The authorized capital stock of the future company reaches about 16 million dollars. The company «Russian troika» will carry out transparent intermodal container transportations by Asia-Pacific region — Western Europe, and it should increase the part of Russia and Transsib in flow of cargo traffic on railway and marine transport on this direction. The main task of the company is to increase flow of cargo traffic from the markets of Asia-Pacific region and its re-orientation from ocean route to Transsib, which now serves less than 2% of its opportunity. The railway part of the project will include Transsiberian route, which connects Far-Eastern ports with western boundary cities and ports of Russia. The marine part of the project will cover developing markets of the Russian trade with the USA and Asia-Pacific region (China, Korea, Japan); cabotage lines of Pacific and Arctic coast of Russia; Western-European directions. On the first stage the new company plans to buy 380 railway platforms, which will be extended till 1100 units. On the following stages of company’s development it is planned to buy the own containerships. The new company will provide to clients the transparent service on all types of railway and marine routes, it will allow to decrease the time of delivery, providing informational tracing on containers’ transference, also it will provide increase the turnover of platforms and enlargement of cargo basis. Authors of the project declare that «the cooperation of the largest railway and marine transport companies allows to rationalize service, to improve the coefficient of capacity usage, to reduce prices of traffic and to improve the customer service». The organization of this company will facilitate the development of multimodal transport in Russia. It is expected that the new company will begin its work in the 4th quarter of 2004. It will operate at full capacity in the middle of 2005.