The flow of merchandise through Romania’s Constanta Port has tripled since the war in Ukraine started, putting pressure on the capacity of the port that now is restricting the activity of Romanian exporters. 

The flow of merchandise through Romania’s Constanta Port has tripled since the war in Ukraine started, putting pressure on the capacity of the port that now is restricting the activity of Romanian exporters that need to rely on other ports in the region.

The Romanian government has sought to help Ukraine’s exporters, especially of grain, access international markets after the blockade of Ukrainian Black Sea ports by Russia. 

Steps taken include repairing a railway line, compatible with the trains circulating in Moldova and Ukraine, from the Moldovan port of Giurgiulesti to the Romanian port of Galati on the Danube. This means freight trains coming from Ukraine through Moldova will not have to be reloaded at the border between Moldova and Romania, which will facilitate grain exports from Ukraine.

However, Romanian exporters say the opening of Romanian ports to Ukrainian companies has caused problems for them. 

Trucks wait in lines of over 30km to unload their containers to Constanta Port’s terminal, where the utilisation of the storage capacity often exceeds 100%. according to Romanian transport companies that are complaining about the lack of access to the terminal’s capacity for Romanian exporters.

When the container terminal experienced an occupancy rate of 103%, the administrators had to refuse 4,000 containers of cargo from Romania, and the local companies had to go to other European ports in order to export the products.

The Romanian transport companies blame the parent company of the terminal operator for the situation, while the Romanian border check authorities are also responsible for the sometimes slower processing of trucks, Bursa daily reports quoting Constanţa Grains & Intermodal Hub, one of the participants in a debate organised by Tranzit magazine on July 7 in Bucharest.

Specifically, the terminal operator decided immediately after February 24 to store in Constanta all the containers that should have reached the blockaded Ukrainian port of Odesa for as long as needed. Most of the containers have been shipped since then, but there are still containers that were not moved for five months.

The daily did not name the entities involved in the operation of the Constanta Port container terminal, but pointed to the Constanta South terminal owned by DP World.

The terminal operator reportedly succeeded in lowering the utilisation rate of the storage capacity (thus smoothing the traffic) by introducing a surcharge that depends on the occupancy rate.