News / Exclusive: Ceva eyes relaunching logistics operations in Russia

French liner CMA CGM’s forwarding arm, Ceva Logistics, is re-establishing a footprint in Russia, despite the threat of widespread sanctions over logistics operations there.

Ceva is said to have finalised plans to launch a new entity in Russia, reportedly named CV Log, according to industry sources.

The global forwarder had ceased the operations of its previous Russian entity, opened in or around 2020 through a local acquisition, industry updates reveal.

Industry sources believe the revamped move is a precursor to CMA CGM preparing to enter Russian trades, which most mainline carriers were forced to abandon following the sanctions on Russia afater it invaded Ukraine in early 2022.

Ceva’s 3PL operations span some 170 countries, and it logged $18.3bn in revenue last year.

MSC is known to be the only the mega-carrier that continued to operate on routes to/from Russia through transhipment, according to sources, regularly loading Indian containers out of Nhava Sheva and Mundra for St Petersburg, Novorossiysk and Vladivostok.

Also between India and Russia, ad-hoc vessel operators, backed by NVOs, have been active on the trade;ane, with fresh capacity expected to join the market because of the growth potential, sources believe.

DP World’s short-haul ocean arm, Unifeeder, is another notable India-Russia logistics service provider, along with Mumbai-based Econship, which has a once-a-month direct sailing to Novorossiysk with a 16-day transit, industry sources told The Loadstar.

Additional capacity signals come amid a renewed push by India and Russia to expand bilateral trade, with a declared pledge to double the market scale, to $100bn by 2030.

“Russia and India have agreed to continue jointly developing systems of bilateral settlements through use of the national currencies in order to ensure the uninterrupted maintenance of bilateral trade,” the two sides said last week during President Vladimir Putin’s visit to New Delhi.

“The two sides agreed to deepen co-operation in building stable and efficient transport corridors, with the focus on expanding logistics links for improving connectivity and enhancing infrastructure capacity to support the International North-South Transport Corridor, the Chennai–Vladivostok (Eastern Maritime) Corridor, and the Northern Sea Route.”

Trade volumes between India and Russia have reported a five-fold increase over the past five years, reaching some $66bn in 2024, according to available data.