Commodity trading business
Gunvor has secured a loan of $675 million to finance its flagship oil products terminal in
Ust Luga, located on the Gulf of Finland, near the Russian border with Estonia.
The oil terminal is operated by
JSC Rosneftbunker, a business unit of Gunvor Group. Its annual capacity is 30 million tonnes, including 20 million tonnes of dark oil products and 10 million tonnes of light products.
Credit Suisse AG acted as lead arranger for the lending syndicate, which also included Russia’s VTB Group, Gazprombank OJSC (GZPR) and ZAO Raiffeisenbank, the Russian subsidiary of Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International AG. (RBI). Russian banks accounted for approximately one-third of the lending syndicate,
Gia Mai, Gunvor’s corporate finance director, said in an interview. Other investing institutions include Bank of China and ABN AMRO.
The loan will be used to fund the Russian terminal’s operations and to complete an expansion of the project that began transporting fuel oil over two years ago.
Gunvor purchased the terminal in 2008. It began shipping fuel oil in January 2011 - the first vessel to load fuel oil from the facility was the product carrier SCF Neva, owned by Sovcomflot, on 31st January 2011.
In May 2013, Rosneftbunker began transporting light oil products. The first train, comprising 3,800 tonnes of diesel fuel spread in 63 tank wagons, arrived on April 18 from the Kirishinefteorgsintez refinery.
When fully completed, the light oil product tank farm will comprise 11 reservoirs with total capacity of 330,000 cubic metres (11.7 million cubic feet). The facility also features two berths, to be used for transshipment of light oil products to tankers with a capacity of up to 166,000 deadweight tonnes (dwt).
Ust-Luga
Situated on the Luga River, approximately 110 kilometres west of St. Petersburg, Ust-Luga is located practically on the border between the Russian Federation and the European Union.
The deep water area of the port (17 metres) together with the 3,700-metre approach canal make Ust-Luga port the only Russian port on the Baltic Sea capable of admitting dry-cargo vessels with a deadweight of up to 75,000 tonnes and liquid cargo carriers with a deadweight of up to 120,000 tonnes.
The port looks set to continue to play an important role in the transportation of oil products as it is one of the few Russian ports capable of providing access to large deadweight vessels to export processed oil products, thus removing the dependence on foreign export terminals.
There are currently seven terminals operating in Ust-Luga port: a coal transshipment terminal, the Universal transloading complex, a terminal for technical sulphur transshipment, a motor-railway ferry complex, the actively developing Yug-2 Multipurpose transloading complex, the 'Factor’ timber terminal and Gunvor's oil export terminal.
