The train with 600 tons of corn from Ukraine arrives in Barcelona after three weeks of travel

Oct. 8 () –

The Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda (Mitma) has received at the Barcelona Can-Tunis terminal the train with 25 Renfe Mercancías 40-foot containers loaded with 600 tons of Ukrainian corn as part of a pilot project to test the alternative or complement rail transport to sea, as reported in a statement.

Thus, the train has completed an approximate route of 2,400 kilometers on the Chelm-Lodz- Duisburg-Barcelona Can-Tunis route, after completing the load of corn and starting its return to Spain since mid-September.

The adapted containers arrived on Thursday night and the unloading of the cereal has already begun in the trucks that have been sent to the terminal by the companies that have bought the cereal at origin through a wholesaler. From now on, it will be taken by road to its final destination in the Iberian Peninsula.

The way back to Barcelona has included a stop in Lodz and a small stopover in Duisburg (Germany), in which the train has been forced to remain stopped for more days than expected due to the strike called in France, which has restricted the railway traffic in your country.

ALTERNATIVE TO MARITIME TRANSPORT

This pilot project seeks to analyze the capacity and viability of rail freight transport as a complement to the maritime transport of raw materials, using railway highways within the European Union (EU), more so in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine that led to the temporary closure of the Black Sea ports, blocking grain exports to the rest of Europe by sea.

In this sense, Mitma has highlighted that the initiative has shown that, in the current context, a great coordination effort is required from the different actors that participate in the process, the most complex point being the loading of cereal in the containers with ‘liners’ at the Chelm terminal, which is not specialized in transporting grain.

In the process, maritime containers with large special bags have been used to transport corn to increase grain loading capacity, since there are not enough special railway containers for cereal on the market to compensate for possible limitations in maritime exports, such as those experienced before summer.