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container trains from China are to arrive June 16 and 26.
To date, 10 Chinese container trains have traveled through Ukraine to the EU, a lucrative business that Ukrzaliznytsia seeks to expand. Last month, China sent 1,033 container trains to Europe, 43% more than in May 2019. The number of containers totalled 93,000, up 48% y/y. With traffic backing up at the Belarus-Poland rail gauge break, Ukrzaliznytsia hopes to attract trains bound for Austria, Hungary and the Balkans. In January, a test Chinese train traveled from Lviv region 400 km into Poland on an old Soviet gauge line that runs to S?awków, a city in south-central Poland.
● Ships
Rada approval of the government’s Inland Water Transport bill would set the stage for quadrupling river cargo during the 2020s, to 45mn tons a year, Infrastructure Minister Vladyslav Krykliy promises on Facebook. Attending the Nibulon river terminal inauguration, Krykliy wrote: “1mn tons of cargo transported by the river saves about UAH1bn for 4 years on road repair.” Last year, the Dnipro carried almost 12bn tons of cargo. Parliament is expected to vote on the bill before going in July on its summer break.
During the first five months of this year – the height of the corona lockdown – Ukraine’s sea ports handled 11% more cargo than during January-May 2019. Exports were up 10%, to 52mn tons. Imports were up 12%, to 10mn tons, reports the Sea Ports Authority. Grain accounted for 41% of exports. Iron ore was the most dynamic, jumping by 51% to 14mn tons. Five ports accounted for 91% of cargo: Pivdennii port +34% to 26mn tons; Mykolaiv -5% to 12.5mn tons; Odesa + 3% to 10.4mn tons; Chornomorsk – 3% to 10.3mn tons; and Mariupol +23% to 2.7mn tons.
Nibulon has inaugurated its 18th river reloading terminal, a $23mn, 16-silo complex in Mar'yans'ke, a right bank Dnipro river town in Dnipropetrovsk region. With equipment from Italy, Spain, Germany, and Great Britain, the terminal was partly funded by the EBRD and European Investment Bank. At the opening last Friday, Nibulon CEO Alexei Vadatursky said of his company’s shipbuilding and river transport investments: “As a result, the rivers are working, and tens of thousands of trucks are not driving Ukrainian roads.”
Pivdenniy, Ukraine’s busiest port, handled a record 2.1mn tons of cargo in May, the highest level since the port opened in 1978 as a satellite of Odesa. Formerly called Yuzhne, the port also unloaded 959 gondola cars a day, a new record for handling the roofless rail cars used for transporting coal or ore.
Since 2014, hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested in Ukraine’s port logistics, tripling the capacity of modern elevators to 90mn tons, says Rainer Staltner, representative in Austria of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Ukraine. Given current export volumes, near 60mn tons, there is no urgent need for more investment in elevators, he told a webinar on food exports, reports Ukrinform.
Rail Containers up, River Cargo down. During the first five months of this year, Ukrzalynistia carried 16% more containers than during January-May last year. Trains moved 185,000 containers, reports Magistral, the state railroad’s inhouse news site. During the same period, river freight was down 14% y/y, to 2.7mn tons, reports the River Information Service, a unit of the Ukrainian Sea
66 UKRAINE Country Report July 2020 www.intellinews.com
