Metinvest Mining and Metallurgical Group increased its exports of steel products to Poland by about 16% year-on-year in 2023 to over 800 thousand tons from about 700 thousand tons in 2022.
According to Yulia Mezentseva, Head of Logistics at Metinvest Polska, in an interview with the leading Polish publication Puls Biznesu, the increase in cargo traffic is facilitated by the unblocking of routes, but transshipment in ports and border crossings remain bottlenecks.
It is also noted that despite the war, Metinvest is expanding its operations in the Polish market.
“2023 was slightly better for us than the previous year. There were no more congestion and queues on the Polish railway network, which contributed to an increase in transportation efficiency. Compared to the previous year, we recorded a 16% increase in tonnage. We transported a total of 1.9 million tons through Polish ports and railways, of which about 1.3 million were steel products, 378 thousand were iron ore and 237 thousand were coking coal,” Mezentseva stated.
Out of the total volume of products delivered from Ukraine to Poland, 939 thousand tons were exported to other countries through Polish ports.
“The coal needed for our steel plants in Ukraine was also transshipped in Polish ports,” the manager said.
Some of the goods brought from Ukraine to Poland were delivered by rail or truck to Germany, the Czech Republic, Italy, Slovakia, and other countries.
Mezentseva clarifies that iron ore used to dominate the structure of supplies from Ukraine, but now it is mainly steel products that are imported. According to the country’s Metallurgical Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Ukraine is the largest non-EU steel supplier to Poland.
The head of logistics at Metinvest Polska predicts that in 2024, Metinvest will at least maintain and perhaps even slightly increase the volume of supplies of some goods to the Polish market. It assumes that their structure will change, especially the volume of steel imported from Ukraine.
For their part, local producers fear that if demand in Poland starts to grow, Ukrainian steel will flood our market. Przemyslaw Sztuchkowski, president of Cognor, even suggests introducing limits on the supply of steel products from Ukraine to the EU. The idea is to allow free transit through Poland to other countries and to ensure that the volume of imports on the Polish market does not threaten the stable operation of Polish producers.
At the same time, Mezentseva states. “In 2021, 1.2 million tons of our steel products were sold directly to the Polish market, 0.7 million tons in the previous year, and 0.8 million tons in 2023. Due to the war, we have limited opportunities to grow production and supplies,” she notes.
In addition, she draws attention to the problems with the transportation of goods across the Polish-Ukrainian border and transshipment in ports, which impede supplies to our market and transit by sea.
“The Polish-Ukrainian agreement stipulates that six trains a day with steel and ore should pass through the wide gauge at the Medyka border crossing. In practice, three or four are allowed through, as the Polish border and railroad administrations give priority to other transport. Therefore, we often have to wait for a long time at the border, which increases our costs. For every hour of downtime, we have to pay CHF 1.9 per commercial wagon,” says Mezentseva.
She suggests that one of the reasons for the long queues at the border could be the recent protests by Polish carriers and farmers.
“The queue on the Ukrainian side sometimes reached 70 kilometers. In the case of delicate goods that needed to be delivered quickly to customers, we sometimes decided to change modes of transportation and transfer goods from cars to trains to avoid standing in a very long line,” says the manager.
She hopes that the suspension of the protests will facilitate uninterrupted transportation by road and rail. She emphasizes that after crossing the border, transportation through Poland is quite efficient.
“In 2022, we often had to wait on the access roads, but now PKP PLK has significantly improved the capacity of the roads leading to the ports,” says Mezentseva, adding that access to the terminals is almost hassle-free, but there are difficulties with transshipment.
“Bulk cargo, such as iron ore and coal, is transshipped much faster than steel products. Transshipment in Polish ports is four times slower than at Black Sea terminals,” Mezentseva said.
According to her, one of the reasons for this may be the lack of staff at the terminals.
The Metinvest representative also points out that Polish customs regulations do not take into account changes in the weight of bulk cargo during transit. However, they can occur, for example, due to weather conditions. Therefore, employees of transportation and transshipment companies have to spend a lot of time during inspections explaining that coal or ore may weigh a little more in rainy weather. There may also be so-called natural losses during transportation.
“Railroad rules allow a certain percentage of deterioration for different groups of goods. Customs rules, on the other hand, do not allow any losses that are subject to individual inspection by the service. For us, this means significant losses,” emphasizes Mezentseva.
Metinvest Group notes that it is interested in building long-term business relations in the Polish market.
“We are talking about challenges, but we are ready to work out solutions together with the Polish side. We want to simplify procedures and transportation,” adds the Head of Logistics at Metinvest Polska.
“Metinvest is a vertically integrated group of steel and mining companies. The group’s enterprises are located mainly in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro regions.
The main shareholders of the holding are SCM Group (71.24%) and Smart Holding (23.76%), which jointly manage it. Metinvest Holding LLC is the management company of Metinvest Group.
Exports from Ukraine to JYSK’s distribution centers increased by 60% in 2023, Iryna Romanchuk, Purchasing Manager of the chain, told Interfax-Ukraine.
“Over the past 12 months, exports from Ukraine to JYSK distribution centers have increased by 60% compared to the same period. However, this figure could have been higher if the borders had not been blocked at the end of 2023, which extended the delivery time from a week to a month, sometimes up to two, which had a very negative impact on all Ukrainian exporters,” Romanchuk said.
The expert clarified that due to the high cost of transportation to European countries, upholstered furniture made in Ukraine is losing its competitiveness, so now mostly cabinet furniture is exported. In addition, JYSK also buys blankets, pillows and household goods in Ukraine.
“At the beginning of 2022, some manufacturers located in the east of the country were unable to resume operations quickly due to a disruption in the supply chain of both components and finished goods. Therefore, we were forced to stop working with these companies. Today, our main suppliers are located in the central and western parts of the country,” said Romanchuk.
As an example of increasing the network’s work with Ukrainian manufacturers, she cited the furniture manufacturer Akord-Import (Khmelnytsky), with whom JYSK expanded cooperation in 2023 both by transferring the production of some furniture series from Europe to Ukraine and by expanding the range with new items. In total, this manufacturer shipped more than 1200 truckloads of finished furniture to JYSK’s European distribution centers in 2023.
JYSK is a part of the family-owned Lars Larsen Group with more than 3.2 thousand stores in 48 countries. Currently, there is an online store jysk.ua and 91 classic format stores in Ukraine, and in 2024 their number will reach 100. JYSK has more than 800 employees in the country.
JYSK’s revenue in the financial year 2022/23 amounted to EUR 5.2 billion.
Since August 2023, the Ukrainian Sea Corridor, created by the Ukrainian Navy, has exported almost 20 million tons of products, including 14.3 million tons of agricultural products, the Ministry of Communities, Territories and Infrastructure reported, citing data from Deputy Prime Minister for Reconstruction of Ukraine Oleksandr Kubrakov.
“During the six months of the Ukrainian corridor’s operation, 661 vessels exported more than 20 million tons of cargo to 32 countries,” the Ministry said in a Facebook post on Saturday.
In January, 6.3 million tons were exported from the ports of Greater Odesa, almost equal to the pre-war level, the report says.
Another 104 ships are expected to arrive, which should export more than 3 million tons of cargo.
Earlier it was reported that exports through the Ukrainian sea corridor reached 15 million tons. Exports via the new Ukrainian corridor amounted to 6.08 million tons in September-November: 0.28 million tons in September, 2 million tons in October, and 3.8 million tons in November. The Ministry had predicted that in December exports could reach 5 million tons, but according to Kubrakov, in December they were close to 7 million tons.
It was noted that in November, the number of vessels increased to 110 from 52 in October and 5 in September, and the total for the three months was 167.
In the Black Sea Grain Initiative (BSGI), which operated earlier, the peak ship passages were 176-180 per month in September-October 2022, and exports were 3.8-4.2 million tons per month.
Corteva Agriscience, an international research and development agricultural company, increased corn seed exports by 50% in 2023 compared to the previous year, its press service reports.
According to the press release, during 2023, the company’s seed production complex in Poltava region shipped more than half a million sowing units of Pioneer® corn seeds, which was a record volume for the 10 years of Corteva’s production in Ukraine.
“Russia’s actions against Ukraine’s agricultural sector prove its outstanding role in ensuring food security in many regions of the world. Corteva considers Ukraine to be one of the largest players in the global agricultural market and in recent years has been consistently increasing production and export of high-quality hybrid corn and sunflower seeds to ensure the ability to produce agricultural products in Ukraine and in those countries where farmers depend on seeds produced in our country,” said Oleksiy Turchynov, Head of Seed Production at Corteva Agriculture in Ukraine.
The company also said that it intends to continue developing the production capacity of the seed complex to increase seed exports through established sales channels to the European Union. To this end, the company has reconfigured its export chains and in 2023, farmers in Europe (Austria, France, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Serbia) and Central Asia received Ukrainian corn seeds of the Pioneer® brand.
As reported, the company’s seed complex in Poltava region was officially opened in June 2013. More than $56 million was invested in its construction. The annual capacity of the plant is about 500 thousand sowing units of corn seeds and 250 thousand sowing units of sunflower seeds.
Corteva Agriculture is a global agricultural company. It offers comprehensive solutions to maximize yields and profitability. It has more than 150 research facilities and more than 65 active ingredients in its portfolio.
The company’s presence in Ukraine includes the headquarters in Kyiv, a research center in Liubarky (Kyiv region) and a seed production complex in Stasi (Poltava region).
In April 2022, the company decided to leave the Russian market due to the full-scale war against Ukraine unleashed by Russia.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has raised its forecast for Ukrainian wheat production in the 2023/24 marketing year (MY, September 2023 – August 2024) by 0.9 million tons to 23.4 million tons and for exports by 1.5 million tons to 14 million tons.
According to the USDA’s January report, Ukraine’s ending stocks will also increase by 1.8 million tons to 4.38 million tons.
For corn, the USDA left the harvest, exports and ending stocks in Ukraine unchanged: 30.5 million tons, 21 million tons and 6.82 million tons respectively.
In general, the updated global wheat crop forecast for the 2023/24 grain year was improved by 1.9 million tons to 784.91 million tons, due to the positive revision of estimates for Ukraine and Russia, while the forecast for China was lowered. The forecast for global wheat exports was also raised by 2.35 million tons to 209.54 million tons. The experts also revised the forecast for global wheat ending stocks upwards by 1.83 million tons to 260.03 million tons.
For corn, the forecast for global production in January was raised by 0.0137 million tons to 1.235 million tons, while exports were lowered by 0.57 million tons to 200.89 million tons. Ending stocks will rise by 10 million tons to 325 million tons.
Since August 2023, the new Ukrainian Sea Corridor created by the Ukrainian Navy has exported almost 15 million tons of products, including 10 million tons of agricultural products, said Oleksandr Kubrakov, Deputy Prime Minister for the Restoration of Ukraine, Minister of Communities, Territories and Infrastructure Development.
“Over the five months of the corridor’s operation, 469 new vessels have entered our Ukrainian ports for loading. Currently, 39 vessels are being loaded in the ports of Odesa, Chornomorsk, and Pivdennyi,” Kubrakov wrote on his Facebook page on Monday.
He noted that another 83 vessels have confirmed their readiness to enter the ports and export 2.4 million tons of cargo.
Earlier, on December 30, Kubrakov said that the volume of exports amounted to 13 million tons by 400 vessels, and a total of 430 vessels passed through the corridor for loading.
According to previously published statistics from the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, exports via the new Ukrainian corridor amounted to 6.08 million tons in September-November: 0.28 million tons in September, 2 million tons in October, and 3.8 million tons in November. The agency expected that in December it could reach 5 million tons, but, according to Kubrakov, in December it was close to 7 million tons.
It was noted that in November, the number of vessels increased to 110 from 52 in October and 5 in September, and the total for the three months was 167.
In the Black Sea Grain Initiative (BSGI), which operated earlier, the peak ship passages were 176-180 per month in September-October 2022, and exports were 3.8-4.2 million tons per month.
