Maritime transport grew in January

Foreign sea transport in Finland grew in January 2020.

According to Statistics Finland's data, the goods volume of foreign sea transport was in total 8.3 million tonnes last month. Sea transport increased by 0.2 million tonnes from last year's January.

The bad news is that export volume fell by 0.7% and amounted to 4.3 million tonnes. In turn, imports increased by 2.3% to 4 million tonnes.

Source: Statistics Finland.

General cargo was transported most, in total 1.3 million tonnes, which is 16%of all transport. The second most transported was crude oil, 1.2 million tonnes, and oil products, 0.9 million tonnes.

Container transport

A total of 1.1 million tonnes of containers were transported through Finnish ports in January 2020, which is 0.1 tonnes more than in January 2019.

The total number of containers transported was 73,145 (or 128,240 TEU containters). TEU is the basic measurement unit for container traffic. It refers to one container that is twenty feet long, eight feed wide and 8.5 feet high.

Vehicle transport

A total of 208,478 transport equipment were transported in foreign sea traffic in January 2020.

Most of those vehicles were of passenger cars belonging to passengers. In total, 127,144 passenger cars were transported. The second most transported were trucks (53,123) and truck trailers (33,620).

Passenger traffic

A total of of 1,049,144 people were transported in passenger traffic in January 2020.

In all, 557,723 persons travelled between Finland and Estonia and 483,511 persons between Finland and Sweden. Altogether, 7,910 passengers were transported between Finland and Germany.

The number of passengers grew by 16% from January 2019. The number of passengers between Finland and Estonia increased by 79,528 and between Finland and Sweden by 70,245. In January 2020, no passengers of foreign cruise ships arrived in Finland.

Saimaa Canal

The Saimaa Canal was open in January 2020. No transport was registered through the canal in foreign traffic.