Romanian port struggles to handle flow of Ukrainian grain

CONSTANTA, Romania (AP) — With Ukraine's seaports blockaded or captured by Russian forces, neighboring Romania's Black Sea port of Constanta has emerged as a main conduit for the war-torn country’s grain exports amid a growing world food crisis.

It's Romania's biggest port, home to Europe's fastest-loading grain terminal, and has processed nearly a million tons of grain from Ukraine — one of the world’s biggest exporters of wheat and corn — since the Feb. 24 invasion.

But port operators say that maintaining, let alone increasing, the volume they handle could soon be impossible without concerted European Union support and investment.

“If we want to keep helping Ukrainian farmers, we need help to increase our handling capacities,” said Dan Dolghin, director of cereal operations at the Black Sea port's main Comvex operator.

“No single operator can invest in infrastructure that will become redundant once the war ends,” he added.

Comvex can process up to 72,000 tonnes of cereals per day. That and Constanta's proximity by land to Ukraine, and by sea to the Suez Canal, make it the best current route for Ukrainian agricultural exports. Other alternatives include road and rail shipments across Ukraine’s western border into Poland and its Baltic Sea ports.

Efforts to lift the Russian blockade have got nowhere, and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization projects up to 181 million people in 41 countries could face food crisis or worse levels of hunger this year in connection with the Ukraine war.

Just days into the Russian invasion, Comvex invested in a new unloading facility, anticipating that the neighboring country would have to reroute its agricultural exports.

This enabled the port over the past four months to ship close to a million tons of Ukrainian grain, most of it...