Grain exports from Ukraine: dry port in Poland to prevent famine

Created: 05/17/2022, 12:23 p.m

By: Aleksandra Fedorska

The Middle East and Africa depend on grain imports from Ukraine.

A dry port on the Polish-Ukrainian border would be one way to prevent famine.

Warsaw – Ukraine is one of the top grain exporters in the world.

It is above all countries such as Lebanon and the North African states that depend on grain from the Ukraine.

Before the Ukraine war, two-thirds of Ukraine's exports were transported by sea.

This transport route has now been blocked by the Russian invasion.

There have been attempts to export grain by rail, but this is cumbersome and has many problems.

Only 600 thousand tons of grain made it across the Ukrainian border last month.

That is around 10 percent of the regular export volume.

Ukraine recently announced plans to increase grain exports by rail fivefold.

However, conventional rail operations between EU countries and Ukraine are not prepared for exports.

Gauges vary and there are difficulties arising from the need for transshipment.

A Ukrainian-Polish dry port could alleviate these problems.

"Poland is currently working on creating a dry port on the border in order to increase the transport capacity for exporting Ukrainian agricultural products, especially to third countries," said Deputy Minister of Agriculture Henryk Kowalczyk.

A dry port, unlike a seaport, is not directly connected to the sea or waterway.

Rather, it is a logistical loading hub, where goods arrive in containers and are further loaded to then be transported by rail to a seaport.

In the case of Poland, the goods will arrive at the transhipment terminals on the Polish Baltic Sea coast.

Ukraine-Russia War: Joint search for alternative transport options for grain

On April 6, Ukraine's new Minister of Agricultural Policy and Food Supply, Mykola Solsky, met with Polish Deputy Minister of Agriculture Henryk Kowalczyk to discuss the issue of establishing new export routes.

The focus was on the search for export routes for agricultural and food products from Ukraine towards the particularly dependent markets.

"We thank our Polish colleagues for the full support in the transit of Ukrainian agricultural products to the EU," said Solsky.

Parallel to the talks with Poland, negotiations are also taking place with Romania.

The Ukrainian media reports that Ukraine is trying to ship its agricultural exports via European seaports, in particular the Romanian seaport of Constanta.

The predecessor of Ukraine's new Minister for Agricultural Policy and Food Supply, Roman Łeszczenko, spoke to Moldova in March about a possible possibility of using their Black Sea seaports.

Łeszczenko stressed that Ukraine must have access to at least one seaport and be able to export up to five million tons of grain a month.

A tractor is seen in a grain field in the outskirts of Dnipro, Ukraine, April 27, 2022.

Seven out of ten hectares in Ukraine are agricultural plots, most of which are planted with corn, grain and anchovies.

Due to the Russian-Ukrainian war and the resulting export difficulties, the current Ukrainian crisis threatens to push hunger beyond the borders, according to the head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for Ukraine.

© IMAGO/MIGUEL GUTIERREZ

Polish ports are currently being used as a temporary measure.

In the meantime, 5,000 tons of Ukrainian corn have been shipped to Rotterdam via the Polish port of Kołobrzeg.

However, these volumes are too small to be able to fulfill Ukraine's supply contracts.

Economic Prospects for Ukraine: Preparations for Grain Export by Rail

Despite the escalating Ukraine conflict, the Ukrainian side has made extensive preparations under the most difficult conditions to make grain exports by rail more efficient.

Individual railway connections near the border with Poland were electrified.

This is intended to increase train weight while reducing operating costs.

Despite the war, Ukraine has also worked intensively on the production of rail vehicles.

In March of this year alone, the Dnieper plant produced 37 open wagons.

The further production of 50 wagons is planned.

In addition, the Ukrainians took over the approximately 15 thousand Russian wagons that were on Ukrainian territory at the time of the Russian invasion.

Some of them are even owned by Russia's Gazprom.

Even if it is possible to optimize rail transport to the Polish border, it is still unclear who will finance the dry port.

Private investors will probably be cautious, because after the end of the war in Ukraine, the dry port is unlikely to be profitable anymore, since transport via Odessa and other Ukrainian ports would be possible again.

Consequently, the project had to be paid for from the Polish state budget.

(Aleksandra Fedorska)