For decades cargoes handled in Estonian ports have been mainly Russian transit traffic. The situation is changing. In 2022 Russian transit traffic was only about 44 per cent of Estonian sea traffic, while Finnish traffic (trade plus transit) was already 26 per cent of volumes. In summary, Finland is not yet as big maritime partner as Russia to Estonia, but its share is increasing all the time while volumes of Russian transit is decreasing. However, it is likely, that the total Estonian maritime volumes will be decreasing in the future.
Estonian trade volumes
In 2022 the total foreign trade of Estonia was 45 billion euros. The biggest trading partners of Estonia in 2022 were Finland both in export (14.5%) and import (16.9%). Other big export counties were Latvia, Sweden, Lithuania and Germany; big countries in import were Lithuania, Germany, Latvia, Russia and Sweden. The Estonian foreign trade with Russia was in total 2.5 billion euros.
Estonian maritime traffic
Trade volumes do not tell the whole story of Estonian maritime traffic. Estonian total sea volume have been decreasing constantly since 2006 due to decrease of transit traffic.
In 2022 Estonian sea traffic was 33 million tons. Estonian trade via ports was 19 million tons; and transit traffic was 14 million tons. In other words, the transit traffic was 42% of Estonian sea traffic.
We can see from Figure 1 that even though the total Estonian traffic has been decreasing, the Estonian trade via seas have been increasing. For example in 2006 the share of transit of total Estonian traffic volumes was 77%. Still in 2021 the share of transit of Estonian maritime traffic was bigger than Estonian import and export.
Major share of transit has been Russian export, but it has been decreasing last 20 year. There is substantial decrease to be seen in 2007 and 2014 due to political relations with Russia. This is also what is expected in 2023.
Figure 1. Estonian sea transport, trade and transit separated (source: Statistics Estonia).
Maritime traffic with Finland
Estonian cargo traffic with Finland has been increasing decades. In 2022 Estonian sea traffic with Finland was over 9 million tons. However, Estonian trade with Finland by sea was only 5 million tons. The rest of cargoes travelling between Finland and Estonia was transit traffic, 4 million tons (44 %). Practically it was trucks driving throught Estonia to other Baltic states and Central Europe – sometimes even to Southern Europe.
Figure 2. Estonian sea transports with Finland (trade + transit) (Source: Statistics Finland, 2023 and Customs Finland, 2023)
Future of Estonian maritime traffic
Estonian maritime traffic is dominated by cargo volumes with Russia and Finland. Russian volumes are mainly transit traffic; and Finnish are half transit and half trade.
We can see that in 2022 Estonian sea transit traffic was 14 million tons (44 percent), out of which 4 million was Finnish transit traffic and approximately rest (10 million tons) was Russian transit. In summary, Finland is not yet as big maritime partner as Russia to Estonia, but its share is increasing all the time while volumes of Russian transit is decreasing. However, it is likely, that the total Estonian maritime volumes will be decreasing in the future.
Note! The Figure 1 and 2 show traffic in thousand tons. In euros the trade and transit to and from Russia would be very different. Russian sea traffic is dominated by low value goods per ton, like coal, oil products and fertilisers, while Finnish trade and transit is very much more high value consumer goods.
Figure 1 of Estonian trade and maritime volumes have been put together by Doctoral student Tõnis Hunt.
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