Barge container transportation was launched in October last year between the Romanian port of Constanta and the Ukrainian Reni. From March 2023 Ukraine plans to extend it to the port of Izmail as well.
As expected, both services (to Reni and to Izmail) will operate in parallel. The first ship call to Izmail is planned for early March. The service will be open to accept containers from all container lines.
The schedule of ship calls involves arriving at each port once a week on average – a circular voyage is about 6-8 days. (one way about 3-4 days). Containers will be accepted on the nearest available vessel. It is noted that containers follow in the transshipment mode, i.e. there is no need to issue transit customs documents at the port of Constanta.
Meanwhile, Ukraine appeals to international partners to demand from Russia to stop artificial delays in the work of the “grain corridor”. As the Ukrainian government stated, representatives of the Russian Federation as part of the inspection groups at the Joint Coordination Center in Istanbul have been systematically delaying the inspection of vessels sailing through the Bosphorus to/from Ukrainian ports for several months in a row. Therefore, out of 10 inspections, as a rule, less than half are carried out daily.