By KYIV. Sept 14 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ascet Shipping LLC has increased its transshipment capacity in the Danube ports from 30,000 tonnes to 100,000 tonnes per month, built a dry port in Western Ukraine and is working to lengthen the logistics chain, the company’s executive director Mykola Hapeyev said at the international Black Sea Grain & Oil 2023 conference on Thursday.
According to his information, the company lost 90% of its capacity due to the war, in particular, the Berdiansk branch, which is under occupation, and the Mykolaiv branch, which is blocked and no longer has connections with the Black Sea. Ascet Shipping was forced to actively develop alternative export routes and extend grain logistics chains. One of these decisions was the creation of a dry port in Lviv region, the second was the increase in transshipment in the Danube ports.
“To effectively use the port infrastructure, you need to quickly load ships and quickly return them. To do this, our company is taking a number of steps. Firstly, we have our own warehouse facilities with a total capacity of 20,000 tonnes, and secondly, we are extending the logistics chain, we begin to work with the client, picking up the grain directly at the elevator or in the field. Thus, we understand the flow of cargo. We understand how many cars arrive at what point, because now 99% of our logistics is automobile, and the most important thing is to have a shipment to load ships,” he said.
He also noted that modern grain logistics does not have the right solutions. What seems right today is rapidly changing. One of the currently working solutions is to load grain without storing it in warehouses at ports, but this leads to the formation of multi-day queues at the entrances to them. In addition, grain truck drivers have already begun to suffer from shelling and are forced to stand in these queues for 10 days or more, the expert said.
Ascet Shipping specializes in providing logistics services for export shipments of grain and food cargo in seven ports of Ukraine: Berdiansk, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Mariupol, Kherson, Dnipro and Zaporizhia. At the beginning of the war, the company moved production facilities to the west of Ukraine and established cooperation with elevators in the region and Europe. The company plans to send cargo by rail and road transport to European ports.
