More than 1,000 merchant ships have transited Ukraine’s seven-and-a-half-month-old grain corridor in the Black Sea, making the new export channel more productive than the earlier United Nations-backed Black Sea Grain Initiative.
Ukrainian seaborne grain exports rose by 30% year-on-year in February to 5.4m tonnes, the highest level since the start of the conflict two years ago, according to data from Clarksons Research. Prior to Russia’s invasion in February 2022, Ukraine exported about 6m tons of food per month via the Black Sea.
In the past few days, Ukraine celebrated passing the 30m tonnes and 1,000 ship mark along its new grain corridor, formed in late July last year after Russia pulled out of the Black Sea Grain Initiative.
The route sees ships leave the ports of Odesa, Chornomorsk and Yuzhny to go either via the Danube or hugging the coastlines of Bulgaria and Romania to head to international markets. The successful export data has been built on an audacious military campaign, using drones to pare back the strength of the Russian navy in the Black Sea.
Ukraine is expected to produce an exportable surplus of around 50m tonnes in the 2023/24 crop year, with most of it likely to be exported via seaborne routes.
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