The Russian invasion has forced many Ukrainian producers to adjust their export logistics, and Interpipe is no exception. The CFTS portal has repeatedly written about how this major industrial company has adapted its transport operations to wartime conditions. Recently it was revealed that Interpipe has chartered a ship to transport goods on the Black Sea for the first time.
In an interview with the CFTS portal, Yevhen Anikin, the head of Interpipe's logistics and customs control department, discussed the company's maritime operations and alternative routes for delivering products by land.
How have you organized the company's maritime logistics since the reopening of the ports of Greater Odesa?
At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, when the ports of Odesa were closed to cargo ships, we operated through Izmail with deliveries to Constanta. When the port in Odesa reopened in January, we were among the first to ship our cargo from the port. Container lines are gradually returning there, and this is a positive trend. Simultaneously, we continue to work with bulk carriers—transporting small batches from one port to another using smaller ships and then transferring them to larger ones. Now bulk operations are possible not only through Izmail but also from Odesa. After reviewing costs, we moved bulk operations from Constanta to Varna in Bulgaria. This allowed us to reduce costs by 46%, saving over USD 1 million in five months.
It is known that Interpipe leased a ship for the first time in its history this year. How did it perform?
Indeed, it was our first experience of chartering a ship. It transported our pipes and railway wheels from Odesa to Varna and Batumi. In two months of operation, we saved more than USD 200,000. Additionally, this allowed us to plan shipments and production more accurately and offer more precise delivery times to our customers. However, the war has also had an impact on this. In October, a crane fell on our chartered ship during an attack on the port infrastructure. It is currently being repaired, so we are considering options for a new time-chartered vessel.
Pipes are delivered to Batumi by sea and then transported to the customer by road or rail. We have created a hub in Batumi where products are unloaded and sorted, similar to Houston in the United States.
You mentioned the port of Batumi, Georgia. Is this a new delivery route?
We have established certain logistics routes since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, but we are constantly reviewing them to reduce costs. Until this year, we made deliveries to Azerbaijan, Armenia, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan by road via Europe. However, we have found an alternative: multimodal transport, which involves using several modes of transport.
Pipes are delivered by sea to the port of Batumi and then transported to the customer by road or rail. Jointly with our partners, we have set up a hub in Batumi where products are unloaded and sorted, similar to the setup in Houston (United States). We also negotiated optimal rates with local rail operators. This transportation format saved us more than USD 900,000 in seven months.
Today, Interpipe is a sought-after customer in the Black Sea region. In two years we have increased our base of potential ocean carriers more than tenfold, allowing us to choose a reliable operator at an optimal price.
The EU remains a priority market, especially for your Rail Products Division. However, just recently there was another strike at the border in Poland. This is destabilizing road logistics. What is the alternative?
Strikes on the Ukrainian-Polish border by truck drivers are among the challenges. We immediately started looking for an alternative and developed two rail delivery routes.
The first option involves loading the company's products onto a truck in Dnipro, which then travels to the town of Mostyska on the border with Poland. There, the truck is loaded onto a railway flatcar that is part of a freight train bound for the town of Forst in Germany. From Forst, a new truck takes the products to the end customer. If the shipment is not destined for Germany, the products are unloaded from the train at another location.
The alternative is to transport the products by rail to Chełm in Poland. A gondola car is loaded in Dnipro or Nikopol and unloaded in Chełm, where the products are sorted for different customers and then delivered by truck to the final destination. Especially for the second option (shipment in gondola cars), we are conducting experiments to develop packaging that can withstand atmospheric precipitation and preserve the quality of the pipes.
Have you reduced vehicle downtime at your plants during loading operations?
We are constantly working in this area. We are working with the loading sections and the relevant departments of our plants. A comparison of the data from July to September this year shows a 45% reduction in vehicle downtime. To achieve this, on the logistics side, we have reviewed and adjusted the time and number of vehicle placements per day. We have also changed the logistics management structure by adding a customs clearance department to coordinate operations better. In addition, this spring the company's plants were authorized to independently apply special seals to vehicles transporting pipes, wheels, wheelsets, and billets abroad and to release them at their destination. Essentially, this is a customs function that was previously performed at customs clearance points. This also has a significant impact on product delivery times.
What about other innovations, such as digitalization?
All projects are prioritized in terms of time. The most important ones are currently being implemented. One of the most important projects is the transition to electronic document management with external contractors. In this way, we have significantly reduced the percentage of debts with carriers because of late submission of documents.
We have also launched a Power BI-based dashboard that gathers all the key information that the logistics service and the company need to make decisions.
We plan to purchase GPS trackers soon to track the movement of vehicles. They will be placed in our cargo, such as pipes, wheels, or wheelsets, allowing us to track the location of the cargo in real-time.
