Given that the infrastructure of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, damaged during the war, supposedly did not have sufficient capacity to export this year’s Ukrainian harvest, Estonian transit companies offered their own solution to the problem. Grain could be transported from Ukraine by rail to Polish ports, where it will be transferred to smaller ports power supplyfor ships bringing grain to Estonian ports: Muuga and Sillamäe. Our ports have grain storage facilities and the ability to load grain into large ships and ship it around the world. According to calculations by Jan Lipinski, member of the board of directors of MGT Muuga Grain Terminalal, a grain terminal operating in the port of Muuga, such a transport system would earn Estonia 50-60 million euros per year. Climate Minister Kristen Michal, however, was happy that more jobs would be created than lost with the end of Russian oil transit. The only concern was that such an unbalanced transportation system, in which grain is transported from Poland to Estonia and then back to Poland and from there to be sent around the world, is a little more expensive than the previous transportation of Ukrainian wheat. We had to find who would pay for it.
Kaupo Läänerand, Vice Chancellor for Maritime Affairs and Aquatic Environment, responsible for transport negotiations for Ukrainian grain exports at the Ministry of Climate, explained then that the overloading of Polish ports speaks in favor of Estonia. The granaries of Poland are full. Furthermore, due to heavy cargo, their ports have limited capacity to serve the required number of large bulk carriers intended for grain transportation. At the same time, there is the capacity to serve smaller ships that can be used to send grain to Estonia. The high price of wheat would also help. In this case, the transport system would start to function even without subsidies. “Our transit companies have made their initial value proposition to the Ukrainian side. The future will depend on the decisions of the Ukrainian side, i.e. whether the price of our corridor will be attractive for them or not,” Läänerand said a month and a half ago .
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2023-12-17 13:06:00
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