An alternative to the grain corridor. Port of Constanta, Romania

Due to the blockade of the Black Sea ports after the war outbreak, Ukrainian exporters were forced to look for alternative chains of grain exports. One of these ways was the port of Constanta in Romania – a large grain hub for Romanian, Serbian, Hungarian, and now Ukrainian agricultural products.

Below are some facts that quite significantly distinguish this port from the Ukrainian ones:

• More than 10 grain handling operators work in the port of Constanta;
• Large grain traders such as Ameropa, Cargill, CHS and COFCO invested into 5 grain terminals;
• The port’s grain storage capacity is about 2 M mt at a time;
• All the terminals are capable of loading grain from barges into ships using floating cranes.

All the above allowed the Constanta port to handle more than 25 M mt of grain in 2021 and 20.4 M mt in the first 10 months of 2022 (on average 2 M mt per month). If November and December 2022 exports are high as well, the 2022 may become a year with record agri exports, not least thanks to Ukrainian grain.