Shutdown of enterprises and colossal losses: what the Black Sea port blockade means for Kyiv

Alternative export routes for Ukrainian agricultural products will be able to compensate for no more than 50–55% of the volumes that previously passed through the ports of Greater Odessa, and will not operate in a stable mode before the end of August.

This was stated by Ukraine’s Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food, Taras Vysotsky, in an interview with Reuters, as reported by TASS.

According to the minister, Ukrainian authorities have launched the necessary procedures to activate alternative routes, but “it will take at least until the end of summer to bring them into a ‘more or less stable’ operational mode.” Even after that, the new routes will be able to cover only half of the monthly throughput capacity of the Black Sea ports, which stood at around 6 million tonnes.

After foreign cargo vessels stopped calling at the ports of Greater Odessa — Odessa, Chornomorsk, and Yuzhne — for security reasons, Ukrainian agricultural producers redirected their shipments to the Danube ports of Izmail, Reni, and Ust-Dunaisk, the Romanian port of Constanța, as well as road and rail routes to the country’s western border.

Using these routes significantly increases logistics costs: according to Vysotsky, delivery expenses rise by approximately €39–43 per tonne. The minister stressed that the alternative routes can serve only as a temporary measure, not a long-term replacement for the Black Sea ports.

An additional constraint for the Danube route has been record-low water levels in the river: according to Vysotsky, the Danube ports will not play a significant role in export logistics until October.

Since July 22, the ports of Odessa, Chornomorsk, and Yuzhne have not received or dispatched a single foreign cargo vessel. The standstill has coincided with the peak of the harvest season. Farmers’ situation is further complicated by rising diesel fuel prices and a 30% increase in freight tariffs announced by the national railway operator Ukrzaliznytsia. As a result, for many farms the revenue from selling the new grain harvest does not cover its production costs.