Ukrainian Railways plans to enlarge fleet of grain trains

MOSCOW. Aug 19 (Interfax) - JSC Ukrzaliznytsia (Ukrainian Railways) is making every effort to increase its fleet of functioning grain trains and plans to raise this number by 500 trains, deputy director of the company's commercial operations department Valeriy Tkachev said.

"We also have plans to enlarge the fleet of grain trains in the near future. We will try to increase it by 500 trains," the Rail.Insider website quoted Tkachev as saying on Thursday at an online meeting with grain market players, according to Ukrainian media.

Ukrainian Railways currently has 7,000 functioning grain trains, the overall number of which on the market is more than 24,000, he said. Besides, the company is offering to use concrete and mineral wagons to transport grain, and has created conditions to ensure that the cost of such transportation does not differ from the cost of transportation by grain trains.

Between the beginning of August and August 18, the queue of railcars at border crossings decreased by 2,600 railcars to 29,000, Tkachev said. In particular, the queue of railcars loaded with grain declined by 15% from 10,000 to 8,500 railcars, and the only border crossing where this queue grew - by 191 railcars to 1,200 - is Yahodyn - Dorohusk on the border with Poland.

Tkachev, who published details of the meeting on social media, also said that average amount of crops loaded per day increased to 47,500 tonnes in August from 39,000 tonnes in July, and as many as 73,000 tonnes of crops were loaded on August 16 alone.

Whereas 917,000 tonnes of crops were transported by rail in July, this figure is expected to reach one million tonnes in August, he said.

The growth of loading and transportation volumes was aided by the opening of a "grain corridor" from three Ukrainian ports in the Odesa area in August, in addition to Danube ports, Tkachev said.

The largest amount of crops - over 100,000 tonnes - has been loaded onto trains heading to the Chornomorsk port, while the total amount of agricultural products transported by rail to Ukrainian seaports stands at over 300,000 tonnes, he said.

Twenty-five vessels carrying over 600,000 tonnes of agricultural products have left Ukrainian ports since the grain deal was signed by Ukraine, the United Nations, Turkey, and Russia in Istanbul on July 22, the Ukrainian Sea Port Authority said on Thursday.