The opportunity to use all three seaports of Big Odesa within the framework of the Istanbul Grain Initiative will help increase transshipment volumes to three or five vessels a day within two weeks, Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov has said.
“Our goal is to increase transshipment in ports. Within two weeks we plan to reach the transshipment volume of three or five vessels per day,” the Ukrainian Sea Ports Authority (USPA) quoted him as saying in connection with the departure of the first vessel from the port of Pivdenny – Sacura with 11,000 tonnes of soybeans for Italy on Monday.
Earlier, as part of the grain initiative, eight vessels with corn, sunflower seeds and sunflower oil with a total tonnage of over 250,000 tonnes left the ports of Odesa and Chornomorsk. Four of them with 84,500 tonnes have already arrived in Istanbul and have been or are being tested by the Joint Coordination Center.
Together with the vessel Arizona, which also left Chornomorsk for Turkey on Monday, carrying 48,500 tonnes of corn, the total number of vessels reached 10, and their tonnage was about 310,000 tonnes.
In addition, within the framework of the Istanbul Grain Initiative, the first vessel for loading since the beginning of the war has already arrived in the Ukrainian port on August 7, and the second on the same day was inspected by the Joint Coordination Center near Istanbul.
“We are working with the guarantors of the agreements so that the grain corridor works smoothly and all the requirements for shipping are met,” Kubrakov said.
