The Nibulon company’s cargo fleet has begun regular trips on the Southern Bug River to a terminal in Voznesensk (Mykolaiv region). The Pereyaslav tugboat and the NBL-030 barge made their first trip on the Mykolaiv-Voznesensk-Mykolaiv route on 24 August.

The CFTS portal reported this, citing information from the Nibulon company.

The non-self-propelled vessel was loaded with 2,000 tons of wheat harvested in 2016. The total loading time was less than eight hours. The grain cargo was unloaded from the vessel on its return to Mykolaiv. The total travel period on the route was less than one day.

According to the director of the Nibulon shipping company, Yevhen Ihnatenko, the 134-kilometer shipping route on the Southern Bug River has thus been reopened.

"The last time local residents saw a cargo fleet near Voznesensk was in 1991," he said.

As the CFTS previously reported, the Nibulon shipping company carried more than 46,000 tons of agricultural goods on the Southern Bug River in the first six months of 2016, which is 35% more than it transported on the river in the entire 2015.

In addition, the company is close to beating a record that was set during the Soviet era, when a maximum of 50,000 tons of grain was transported on the Southern Bug River per year.

The Nibulon company plans to increase the volume of grain cargoes transported on the river to 1 million tons.

As reported, the Nibulon company has launched the vessels it built under the B2000 project and the vessels performed their first trips on the Southern Bug River at the end of June this year. The barge NBL-029 performed a trip from a transshipment terminal in Mykolaiv to the Novoodesskaya transshipment terminal in Mykolaiv together with the Kremenchug tugboat. The travel time was less than eight hours and the vessel was loaded with 2,000 tons of wheat. The total loading time did not exceed eight hours. 

According to Nibulon, 80 trucks are taken off the roads in the Mykolaiv region as a result of a single such trip.