Cartagena receives the first ships from Ukraine with 90,000 tons of grain on board

The forecast is that the import of solid bulk at the end of the year will show very positive figures

CARTAGENA (MURCIA), Sep. 9 () –

The Port of Cartagena has received the first two ships from Ukraine with 90,000 tons of grain on board. These are the bulk carriers DS Sofie Bulker and Seajoy, which docked on Wednesday at the Escombreras dock loaded with 27,000 tons of barley and 63,000 tons of corn, respectively.

In this way, the maritime release for the export of grain from Ukraine begins to generate hope among the productive sector of the Region, according to sources from the Port Authority in a statement.

On September 1, these two ships left the commercial ports of Odessa and Chornomorsk loaded with 90,000 tons of grain and, after passing the regulatory inspection in Turkey, docked at the Port of Cartagena this past Wednesday.

After the agreement reached by Moscow and kyiv to enable the unlocking of Ukrainian grain, the Region begins to receive the long-awaited cargo of grain at the South and Prince Felipe docks of the Escombreras dock.

The two most anticipated bulk carriers of recent months have arrived there with a load of barley and corn to supply, mainly, the livestock sector of the Region of Murcia and the entire area of ​​influence of Spain that uses the port of Cartagena to gain in competitiveness .

The president of the Port Authority, Yolanda Muñoz, showed her satisfaction with “this much-needed operation” by witnessing on site, together with the Ership delegate in Cartagena, Jorge Martín, the unloading of 27,000 tons of barley. OR

A fact that has been possible thanks to the fact that “large port operators such as Ership, cereal importers, the productive sector of the Region of Murcia and the Port of Cartagena have joined synergies to bring this cereal from Ukraine”.

For his part, the Minister of Agriculture wanted to assess this important news, highlighting “the importance of the Port of Cartagena for the Region of Murcia and, especially now, for our livestock that has been enduring a complicated situation for months due to the shortage of cereal with which feed the animals”.

“We are going to continue working in coordination with the Cartagena Port Authority to continue responding to the needs of the productive sectors, being a national benchmark and promoting trade with foreign countries through the port,” he stated.

Sofie Bulker and Seajoy are the two Bulk Carrier ships that have transported 27,000 tons of barley and 63,000 tons of corn, respectively, to the Port of Cartagena.

To speed up the work, Ership has put into operation two of the seven high-efficiency self-propelled cranes with the ECO label that the company has installed in the Port of Cartagena. As Jorge Martín explains, this state-of-the-art infrastructure “has a great unloading capacity that, together with our team of professionals specialized in bulk, allows us to speed up times and be more efficient with the work we do.”

In addition, he adds that “we have a warehouse capacity of 200,000 square meters and, for other traffic in the construction and energy sectors that require more speed, we have the largest crane model on the market capable of moving about 2,000 tons per hour directly from the dock to the ship.

The director, Fermín Rol, and the head of Port Operations, Borja Fernández-Pacheco, have also visited the Escombreras solid bulk terminal. From there they have been able to verify how each “spoonful” of the crane unloaded 30 tons of cereal into an ecological hopper for the subsequent filling of the trailer of the trucks ready for its subsequent transfer to the warehouse.

The president of the APC explained that these first ships “open an important path for the arrival of many more grain ships throughout the year, which will allow us to consolidate that increase of almost 20% that we were experiencing during the first half of 2022 and that will have a positive impact on the global solid bulk import figures at the end of the year”.

The delegate of Ership Cartagena has also assessed this double operation with optimism and anticipates that “it will be a strong end of the year for grain imports. Customers have managed to get ships out of Ukraine and what that entails, so it is very likely that, in solid bulk, we increase our volume in consideration”.

Solid bulk continues to lead the growth of port activity. Along with the Eastern European country, there are also other booming markets that promote the arrival of cereal in the Region, such as the United States, Germany, Brazil or France. An alternative promoted by the APC after the crisis generated by the war between Russia and Ukraine.