Roundtable on "Deficit of grain hoppers within export logistics” held 14 September at 11.00 a.m. in the office of AgroGeneration. There were representatives from agricultural and logistics companies, exporting companies, and representatives from authority and Ukrzaliznytsia among the participants of the roundtable.

A problem of transportation of grain cargoes appeared in Ukrainian agricultural companies during recent months. The main reason which led to this situation is the lack of petrol and oil for locomotives of rolling stock in Ukrzaliznytsia. Due to the delay in the implementation of the plans Ukrainian companies have broken contracts with foreign partners, that is why they receive no financial receipts to continue their promotion. Therefore, not only Ukrainian agribusiness suffers as the result of it, but also the government, according to experts` estimates about 2 billion UAH has already been lost.

Director General of Ukrainian AgriBusiness Club Taras Vysotsky said that the problem of grain transportation may have serious consequences: "If a tranche from the IMF in 1 billion USD is important for state, now we face with exports worth 10-12 billion USD. Because of that it is essential to start solving this problem immediately, it is also necessary to combine different points of view in a single vector. Ukrzaliznytsia has used heritage received from the Soviet times for 5 years. Without investments, we can no longer seed grain because we are not able to consume it domestically. We must understand that all these things are only the beginning, and everything depends on political will which interfere to move in the strategically right direction”.

Kateryna Konaschuk, vice president of AgroGeneration said that the company felt the impact because of lack of grain hoppers and fuel since the beginning of the season. "We load grain from 16 elevators; especially a lot of problems there are on the Lviv and Donetsk railways. It seems that nobody cares about these regions. It leads to default before partners. The biggest problems are expected in October, when the need in transportation of other products like corn and sunflower will increase. Personally, I look forward to actions from Ukrzaliznytsia".

The main problem, according to Olexander Frolov, Deputy Director of the Department of traffic of «Ukrzaliznitsia», is the lack of fuel for grain hoppers. Today, we need to invite tender, which will determine the stable supply of diesel fuel. "The amount of grain hoppers today is 10,500 of inventory ones and 2,500 of our own hoppers. Ukrzaliznytsia has a stock of fuel for the next 4 days, moreover, Ukrzaliznytsia is waiting for another 3 thousand tons of fuel, this will be enough for a week ", - Olexander Frolov mentioned.

Vladyslava Rutytska, Advisor of the Minister of Agrarian Policy, payed attention to the fact that today it is extremely important to invite a tender as soon as possible. "Last year, we shipped the grain every day by 2100 grain hoppers compared to today's 1750 ones, so it is not clear, why it has changed. Ukrzaliznytsia need to find at what stage the problems occur", - Vladyslava Rutytska said.

The participants of the roundtable gave several possible solutions for fuel and grain hoppers deficit. The main objective is to create working groups to resolve the issue and to implement strategic program for the future. One of the possible solutions of the problem of timely transportation is Ukrzaliznytsia cooperation with the sender companies, which could provide regular supply of diesel fuel. In order to facilitate the routing of rolling stock, it is possible to use private locomotives owned by sender companies.