Russia and China are preparing to set a record for container shipments along the Northern Sea Route

In 2025, Russia and China will set a new record for container traffic volumes along the Northern Sea Route (NSR) – they will exceed 400,000 tons. This was stated by the head of Rosatom, Alexey Likhachev, following a meeting of the subcommittee on cooperation on the Northern Sea Route in Harbin.
According to him, Russian-Chinese cooperation on the NSR is growing rapidly.
“If we talk about the number of container shipments, it doubled first in 2023-2024, and now by about another 60%,” Likhachev said.
According to him, last year shipments amounted to less than 180,000 tons, and in 2025 the figure “is likely to exceed 400,000 tons.” The head of the state corporation stressed that “not only the quantity, but also the volume of transported goods is increasing.”
The Northern Sea Route is the shortest route between the western part of Eurasia and the Asia–Pacific region, a key transport artery of Russia with a length of about 5,600 km. According to Rosatom, in 2024, the volume of cargo transportation along the NSR reached a record 37.9 million tons, which is 1.6 million tons more than a year earlier.
On August 27, Alexey Chekunkov, Minister for the Development of the Far East and the Arctic, told that Russia expects to increase the volume of shipments along the NSR to 100 million tons by 2030. He noted that today the country is a world leader in ice navigation.