The port of Constanta (Romania) has begun using a floating crane to reload crops arriving along the Danube River on barges from Ukraine onto commercial ships for further shipment to third countries.
This will eliminate the need to reload grain to port granaries from the logistics chain and will increase the cargo flow processed by the port, according to the website of the Bulgarian publication Maritime.bg.
“Transport Trade Services (TTS) has launched a new comprehensive logistics project that provides a significant increase in cargo traffic from Ukraine, transported from the river ports of Reni and Izmail, and their subsequent loading onto commercial sea vessels in the port of Constanta,” the publication’s website states.
According to him, Ukrainian grain cargoes will be reloaded by a floating crane in the deep-water part of the port of Constanta directly from barges arriving by river transport to commercial vessels.
According to the publication, the first ship loaded according to the new logistics model was the Lausanne motor ship (the flag of Sierra Leone), which received 31,000 tons of grain from Ukraine.
As reported, due to the congestion of logistics routes in the Sulina Canal (Romania), Ukrainian exporters of agricultural products are forced to wait in line for loading grain carriers for 10 days or more, which in total causes them $500,000 in losses per day.
Ukrainian Minister of Agropolitics Mykola Solsky said that the logistics of Ukrainian agricultural products through Romania could become more complicated and slow down in June, when a new crop of Romanian, Serbian, Hungarian and Bulgarian winter wheat and barley will begin to arrive at the seaports of this country and will create competition for supplies from Ukraine.
German Minister of Agriculture Cem Ozdemir called for thinking about creating not temporary, but permanent alternative routes for the export of grain from Ukrainian territory, the EFE agency reports on Friday.
“The Black Sea cannot be considered as a safe route for Ukraine in the long term, even after the end of hostilities,” the minister suggested at a press conference. For this reason, according to the minister, “it is necessary to look for one or more permanent alternative routes.”
EFE notes that Ozdemir is skeptical about the chances of success in negotiations with the Russian Federation on the export of grain from Ukrainian ports.
