[1] The Baltic Sea Shipping Company (BMP) traces its history from the Saint Petersburg- Lübeck Society of Steamships, founded in 1830.
During the war years, the BSC, in close contact with the Red Banner Baltic Fleet, was engaged in evacuation, medical support, and the supply of military garrisons defending blockaded Leningrad.
Many of the shipping company's employees joined the people's militia, soviet partisans, worked on the Road of Life and in the ports of Ladoga.
They actively provided the sailors with housing, not only buying it from the city, but also building it independently (in particular, a record 750 apartments were commissioned in a year and a half).
Together with other Soviet enterprises and the Hamburg firm "Transglob", the shipping company built the first plant in the North-West for the production of containers for sea transportation, which had to be bought abroad earlier.
In the state farm "Agro-Balt" sponsored by the shipping company in the Kingiseppsky, a powerful complex was created: fruit and vegetable, meat and dairy, sausage factories.
With the help of Dutch combines in the fields of the state farm, crops were grown up to 300 centners of potatoes per hectare, which were stored without loss in a new vegetable storehouse.
Under the new conditions, the enterprise gained full economic independence, 50% of the earned profit was left at the disposal of the shipping company.
At that time, contracts were signed for the construction of 18 new ships at the shipyards of Leningrad, Poland, Germany, in 1991 the passenger ferry "Anna Karenina" was purchased.
[6] The working conditions of seafarers have changed, their real wages have increased: a sailor began to receive $360 per month instead of 40.
Kharchenko, who was the head of BSC, was arrested on charges of major violations in the expenditure of foreign exchange funds of the shipping company, placed in a pre-trial detention center for 4 months, but then released on recognizance not to leave (the case was subsequently closed for lack of corpus delicti).
1004 "On State Support of the Russian Merchant Marine Fleet in the Baltic" was issued, instructing the government to take urgent measures to stabilize the operation of infantry fighting vehicles, protect the marine fleet in the Baltic and bring to justice those responsible for violations of Russian legislation on privatization.
[11] The company's development program provides for the construction of 116 vessels for various purposes, 4 passenger ferries and large infrastructure facilities, which include a terminal in the port of Ust-Luga Multimodal Complex, a shipyard with a dry dock, the Lesnoye industrial and business zone in the Vsevolozhsk district of the Leningrad region,[12][13] a mini-CHP plant and the modern headquarters of the shipping company, as well as the Baltic Interregional High-Tech Medical Center and a residential complex.