Ukraine Has No Full-Fledged Alternative To Exports Through Seaports - UGA

In 2–3 years, Ukraine will not be able to complete facilities for storage and transshipment of agricultural cargo, including grain, at border crossings to facilitate export volumes comparable to the potential export volumes of seaports.

This was stated by Mykola Horbachov, the president of the Ukrainian Grain Association (UGA), the CFTS portal reports, citing the Interfax Ukraine news agency.

"In two years, everyone involved in the grain business has seen that we have managed to reach the figure of 1.1 million tons of grain and oilseed exports by rail. That was our record in November 2023. After that, we shipped less than a million tons. Today we transport about 600,000 tons by rail," he said.

According to Horbachov, the record volume of exports by road during the month was 600,000 tons.

According to the UGA president, the two modes of transportation for exporting Ukrainian agricultural products during the war - railways and roads - facilitated the export of 1.7 million tons of grain and oilseeds to the world market in record months.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian ports (excluding the occupied seaports of Berdiansk and Mariupol and the out-of-service seaports of Mykolaiv and Kherson) facilitate the export of 7 million tons of agricultural products per month.

At the same time, exports through Danube ports have increased from 100,000 tons of agricultural goods per month before the war to 2.5 million tons, Horbachov said, suggesting that this figure could be increased by an additional 500,000 tons.

"But it is still not 7 million tons. Freight costs are still higher, and it depends on neighboring countries," he said.

"Our current agricultural model requires ports, and there is no alternative to it... We export 7 million tons through the three ports of Greater Odesa—the Pivdennyi, Odesa, and Chornomorsk ports—and there are 11 grain terminals in Mykolaiv. We can easily add 2.5-3 million tons, and we will be able to ship more than we can grow," he said.

According to the latest reports, over 40 million tons of cargo have been exported from the ports of Greater Odesa through Ukraine's Black Sea corridor. Of these, 26 million tons were grain and the rest were mainly products of the Ukrainian mining and metals industry.