A tugboat glides over the mirror-smooth water in the port of Constanta, ready to send a ship carrying Ukrainian grain out to sea. On board is 40 thousand tons of grains, partly also from Romania, just filled. On the quay of the port company Comvex, a heavy oil smell mixes with the slightly sharp smell of agricultural products. ‘We are not the biggest,’ says Dan Dolghin, manager of the grain terminal. ‘But the fastest. From Europe.’
Dolghin, rimless goggles under his construction helmet, points to a metal elephant trunk that is loading the ships at a rate of 3,000 tons per hour. The grain comes from the silos on the quay (total capacity: 200 thousand tons), next to which the Comvex employees look like ants. Further on are rusty mountains of iron ore, along the horizon are tens of meters high cranes. Trucks are waiting on the quay and an inland vessel is moored: another several thousand tons of grain.
Never before has Ukrainian grain passed through this port. Normally, only cereal products from our own hinterland pass through the quays of Constanta: in addition to Romania, also from Serbia, Slovakia, Hungary and Austria, well connected by the Danube. Moldova and Ukraine join the war. The Russian navy is blocking Ukrainian ports, including Odesa. And Ukraine, in turn, has filled the coastal area with sea mines to prevent a Russian landing. In peacetime, 98 percent of Ukraine’s grain exports leave the country through its ports on the Black Sea, about 5 million tons per month. In April, Ukraine only got 1.1 million tons across the border.
The blockade is a problem for the whole world: Ukraine is one of the largest exporters of wheat (12 percent of world trade), maize (15 percent) and sunflower oil (50 percent). Together with Russia, it accounts for a third of global grain exports. Ukrainian fields feed the world, and without free Ukrainian ports there is a threat of famine, warn the United Nations, among others. According to Secretary-General António Guterres, hundreds of millions of people are at risk of hunger. There are more than 20 million tons of grain in Ukraine. And that has to go before the end of the summer, because this year’s harvest has nowhere else to go.
grain hub
In Constanta, the lion’s share of grain from Ukraine so far passes through the Comvex terminal. As a result, the company’s trade has grown by 22 to 24 percent, says director Viorel Panait, who has his office in a building that has been weathered by sea air in the heart of the port. ‘Of course there is a business opportunity. But we must not refuse either, we must help Ukraine and the world.’ And there are practical reasons. ‘Of the European ports, Constanta is both the closest to Odesa and the closest to the Suez Canal.’
Constanta is also the largest port on the Black Sea and traditionally a hub for grain exports. Romania is the largest exporter of wheat in the EU. According to figures from the port management, a record amount of 25 million tons of grains passed through the port in 2021, 37 percent of the total trade that year. Despite these impressive statistics, Constanta has faced multiple problems since the outbreak of the war.
Goods cannot enter Ukraine through the ports either, so containers destined for Odesa have been piling up in Constanta since the start of the war. This can be clearly seen at the large South Terminal, some fifteen kilometers from the quays of Comvex. ‘We now have to put them on the road and in the parking lots,’ says safety manager Gabriel Pintea of container company DP World. He drives a passenger van over the company site that is slowly becoming clogged.
In order for a container terminal to function properly, the occupancy rate must be around 75 percent, explains Pintea. “We’re at 98 percent.” The containers are now collected by truck and driven to Ukraine, a slow and cumbersome process. From the control tower, Pintea shows how full the site is, which can accommodate about 20,000 containers. Normally there are three containers on top of each other, now there are five almost everywhere, ‘the absolute maximum’. The containers contain everything from furniture to electronics. Pintea points to a row of white containers. “It contains perishables. Some have been there since February 24. The contents are rotting.’
Russian bombings
Fortunately, the pace is higher at grain companies. Comvex, which is notable for its speed, fills a 70,000-ton container ship in 24 hours. But first it has to arrive in Constanta. And therein lies the problem. Grain transports now divert to land and river routes. Trucks, trains and especially barges transport grain to Constanta. In the small ports of Reni and Izmail, on the Ukrainian-Romanian border, it is transhipped to smaller barges, which then travel via the Danube and the Black Sea Canal to the port of Constanta.
It is a faster route than the trucks, which sometimes queue for days at the border. It is also faster than the train. The track in Romania and Ukraine has different widths (a holdover from Soviet times), which means that wagons are lifted onto different undercarriages at the border, a time-consuming process. Grain exports are also hampered by targeted Russian missile strikes on supply lines to Reni and Izmail and most recently a large grain storage facility in the port of Mikolayiv.
The task is ‘gigantic’, European Commissioner for Transport Adina Valean said at a press conference in May. For the millions of tons of Ukrainian grain, 10 thousand barges and 300 large ships (with a capacity of 70 thousand tons, red.) needed,” Valean calculated. Noble as the efforts, the new emergency routes have so far managed to get only a fraction of the grain out to sea.
Comvex shipped about 250 thousand tons, just over 1 percent of the total. And that’s almost all the Ukrainian grain that has been through Constanta. According to the port authorities, 602 thousand tons of grain have arrived at the port since the start of the war, of which 340 thousand tons are still in storage and waiting for transport. It is therefore logical that, in addition to routes via Constanta and other European ports, a solution is being sought for Ukrainian grain.
Harvest
Until then, the Ukrainian grain partly chooses the wide suds via Constanta. At the end of February, director Viorel had already invested 4 million euros in a transshipment point where four additional inland vessels can be unloaded, doubling the capacity. But it takes more than ‘small business enthusiasm’, he says with a smile.
The Romanian government announced in May a project worth 40 million euros to make optimal use of the train tracks of the ports again. Hundreds of wagons are rusting there as a result of years of legal battles. But according to Viorel, more is needed. ‘Structural investments from the EU: equipment, infrastructure. The connection with Ukraine must be improved.’
The board of the port itself is optimistic about the future and does not foresee any problems, let it know in a written response. But grain chief Dolghin is more cautious. According to him, the real challenge is yet to come. ‘Up to now we have been able to handle the Ukrainian influx well. But March and April are traditionally quiet months.’ The Romanian harvest will start at the end of this month. And that grain also has to go out to sea. ‘We’ll see what happens when the harvest here comes directly from the Romanian fields. Once the trucks start moving, we can’t stop anymore’, says Dolghin sec. “You can’t keep a harvest waiting.”
‘An unprecedented wave of hunger’ threatens in the horn of Africa
While Russia and Turkey are struggling in Ankara negotiations over the free passage of Ukrainian grain across the Black Sea, the war-induced food crisis in Somalia is showing its cruel face. The country in the horn of Africa, where it hasn’t rained significantly for four years, is teetering on the brink of famine. 50 percent of the population has little or no access to food, according to the UN. The infant mortality rate is 15 percent higher than last year. The same applies to neighboring countries Ethiopia and Kenya. Before the war, Somalia imported 50 percent of its wheat consumption from Ukraine and another 35 percent from Russia.
“Three months since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we see a new reality,” UN chief António Guterres warned in a pitch-black speech on Wednesday. “For people around the world, the war, along with other crises, threatens to unleash an unprecedented wave of hunger and poverty, resulting in social and economic chaos.”
Guterres referred to record-breaking food prices, as well as high energy prices and doubled fertilizer prices, which could have a major impact on rice farming in Asia and South America. “This year’s food crisis will be about the lack of access, but next year’s may be about a lack of food.”
International pressure on Russia not to use grain as a means of pressure has been great for months, but not particularly effective. Russian President Putin says the rise in food prices is mainly a result of Western sanctions against his country. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who previously accused Russia of ‘blackmailing the world with a specter of hunger’, countered this Wednesday that sanctions make an exception for ‘basic foods’. “So let’s stick to the truth.”
Turkey is trying to mediate at the request of the UN. After the first round of talks in Ankara, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that his country is prepared to give commercial Ukrainian grain ships free way, subject to conditions, provided the Ukrainians themselves mine their ports in the Black Sea. Putin later added that Russia promised not to take this opportunity to attack Odesa. But the Ukrainian government, which was not invited to the deliberations in Ankara, said from Kiyv that it had no confidence in this Russian promise. Instead, President Zelensky himself warned in a video message on Thursday morning that “millions will die if Russia continues its blockade of the Black Sea” and Ukraine’s wheat, sunflower oil and maize cannot find their way to the rest of the world.
Thanks to its particularly fertile soil, the so-called tsjornozem, as a mecca for agriculture. But the mines, trenches, high fuel prices and blocked ports are jeopardizing the harvest. And that is a problem for the whole world, this report shows from the Ukrainian fields.