Company Profile
The Estonian transport system comprises rail, road, maritime, river, and air transport as well as the municipal electrified transport and carriage by pipeline.
The infrastructure of national transport has generally been well established; due to high competition, the local logistics and transport companies have reached the western standards in terms of service and quality and have great transport potential.
The operation services are mostly provided by private enterprises. Maritime transport, inter-urban coach traffic, air traffic, and most of the rail transport is being provided by private enterprises. The major national transport enterprises include AS Tallinna Lennujaam (Tallinn Airport Ltd), AS Tallinna Sadam (Port of Tallinn Ltd), AS Elektriraudtee (Electrical Railways), which is servicing the vicinity of Tallinn, and AS Eesti Raudtee (Estonian Railways), state ownership of 34%, holding the majority of the public railway infrastructures of Estonia.
The export and import of goods to the west, north, and south are mainly organised by exploiting the opportunities of maritime and road transport, to a marginal extent also by air transport. As a rule, the goods are delivered to the harbours of Muuga, Tallinn, Paldiski, Kunda or P?rnu, or taken by road transport to other European countries via Latvia mostly using the Tallinn-Ikla road, or delivered to Russia by the Tallinn-Luhamaa and Tallinn-Narva roads. After joining the EU, the number of road trains crossing the Russian-Estonian border has increased by about 60-70%. As the transport of goods delivered to Estonia as well as the dispatched export, import and goods in transit is mainly (~90%) organised in a multi-modal1 transport chain (ship-train or train-ship), the capacity of goods in transit and assortment of goods is similar to the trade flows passing the ports. The capacity of the inter-modal2 goods is approximately 9.2%.
Out of the capacity of the pay-transport in Estonia in 2004 (altogether 95.1 million tons), rail transport comprised 69%, road transport 29.6%, and maritime transport only 1.5%. The capacity of international transport of goods 48.3 million tons. The annual growth of transport in general was 1.2% and the international transport services enlarged even by 9.8%. The turnover of transport in 2004 comprised 19,311.8 million tons per kilometre.
Out of the goods dispatched from Estonia in 2004 (according to the value of the goods): to Finland 23.2%, Sweden 15.4%, Germany 8.4%, Latvia 7.9%, Russia 5.7%, Lithuania 4.4%, Hungary 3.7%, Great Britain 3.56%, Denmark 3.31%, Norway 3.28%, the USA 3.21%, and the Netherlands 3%. The capacity of goods dispatched to other 74 countries was smaller.
The goods were imported from Finland, 22.2%, Germany 12.9%, Sweden 9.7%, Russia 9.2%, Lithuania 5.3%, Latvia 4.7%, Netherlands 3.6%, and Poland 3.3%; from other 64 countries to a smaller extent.
The most important product group of the Estonian foreign trade comprises mechanical machinery and electric equipment, which forms 17.5% of the gross export and 25% of the gross import. In terms of export, these are followed by food products, alcoholic beverage, and tobacco products (11.5%), mineral products (10.3%), means of transport (9.4%), and metal and metal products (8.8%). In terms of import, the mineral products (17.2%), metal and metal products (14.9%), means of transport (8.2%), and food products, alcoholic beverage, and tobacco products (7.1%) follow.
