History

Universal Forwarder was founded in 2010 on the basis of enterprises that have been providing shipping agent and freight forwarding services in the sea ports of the Azov-Black Sea and Baltic Sea basins for decades. The company almost entirely incorporated the teams of "TuapseVneshTrans" and "TagVneshTrans", as well as employees of the handling and ocean freight department of Independent Transport Company.

Since its inception, Universal Forwarder has been focused on providing comprehensive services to support seaborne cargo traffic. The main activity was the provision of loading/unloading and freight forwarding services in Russian and CIS states’ sea ports, ship agency services, the arrangement of rail, inland, road transportation, brokerage services for chartering dry tonnage for Russian cargo and foreign charterers’ freight.

The company's cargo volume was made up of the most important export industrial goods and agriproducts: ferrous metals, coal, grain, mineral fertilizers, petcoke, ore, project cargo. Over the years of cooperation, we have managed to maintain and strengthen business relationships with the largest Russian industrial groups specializing in the production of these goods.

Among key areas of focus of Universal Forwarder is the arrangement of handling and transportation service for oversized project equipment of petrochemical and metallurgical enterprises, energy and transport sectors. As an example, we have successfully completed intra-port transfer of TALGO high-speed electric trains for Uzbekistan Railways and KZ8A locomotives for Kazakhstan Railways, power transformers for Nyaganskaya GRES CCGT Power Plant, Saratovskaya HPP, Yuzhnouralskaya GRES 2, Priz-class AS-30 deep submergence rescue vehicles and other heavy-lift loads. "Sea Port of St. Petersburg" remains our long-standing stevedoring partner in all projects.

In 2017, Universal Forwarder began to actively develop the container service, offering its customers services for the provision of empty containers, consolidation and delivery of GP containers to seaports with their subsequent transportation by container lines to the final destination. We took upon ourselves the organization of export container shipments of finished products, as well as the delivery of rare imported raw materials through the ports of St. Petersburg, Novorossiysk, Tuapse, and marine terminals of the Far East. In order to ensure smooth process of containerization of goods at our shippers’ production sites, we established a separate division in Yekaterinburg in 2021.

Besides, Universal Forwarder successfully handled the shipment of OOG manufacturing equipment in 2021 from Yekaterinburg to India for NLMK Group’s transformer steel plant which is under construction. The total volume of the shipment included to 357 units of cargo of total weight of 1,000 tonnes, with maximum dimensions of individual units reaching 16 m in length, 4.5 m in width and 4.55 m in height. We used 40ft special purpose containers, including FR, OT and HC, as the main logistics solution.

In 2022, Universal Forwarder expanded the list of freight forwarding services in the territory of the port of Tuapse, including the escort of goods arriving on ro-ro vessels. Fruits and vegetables from Turkey formed the basis of the cargo flow. The Universal Forwarder organizes the unloading of imported products into the permanent customs control zone, the passage of legislative formalities, the re-export of equipment and cargo that has not passed control, the proper registration of shipping documents, and the export of cargo from the terminal.

In 2023, Universal Forwarder began providing services of linear ship agency. The company organizes the processing of the fleet of the international container line UGL Shipping in the Bolshoy Port of St. Petersburg. New routes connected St. Petersburg with Turkey and the countries of Southeast Asia.