Ukrainian Railways exports 1.6 mln tonnes of grain in Aug, largest amount since end of Feb 2022

MOSCOW. Sept 1 (Interfax) - Ukrainian Railways (JSC Ukrzaliznytsia) exported 1.6 million tonnes of grain in August 2022, which is the largest amount since the end of February, and 1.74 times higher than these figures for July of this year, Ukrainian media said on Thursday.

This increase has been achieved after agricultural exports from three Ukrainian ports resumed in line with the Istanbul grain deal.

Out of the overall amount of grain exported by Ukrzaliznytsia in August, 805,000 tonnes were transported via land border crossings on Ukraine's western border (716,000 tonnes in July), and 795,000 tonnes were delivered to ports (190,000 tonnes in July), deputy director of the company's commercial operations department Valeriy Tkachev said during an online meeting with representatives of the sector on Thursday

In August, a total of 1.74 million tonnes of grain were loaded into Ukrzaliznytsia train cars, accounting for 18.7% of the overall amount of 9.28 million tonnes loaded by Ukrzaliznytsia last month, Tkachev said. The company transported 2.08 million tonnes of grain in August.

Ukrzaliznytsia loaded an average of 56,000 tonnes into its train cars per day in August, Tkachev said. This figure ranged from 24,000 tonnes to 40,000 tonnes at the beginning of last month, but reached 50,000 tonnes-80,000 tonnes per day after the grain corridor set up under the Istanbul agreements begun functioning in a full-fledged manner.

In August, Ukrzaliznytsia also exported 107,000 tonnes of sunflower oil and 148,000 tonnes of cakes and meals of all kinds.