As a strategic target of national, economic and military importance, the port of Constanta remains a merchant unable to sell desert water or maritime transport services at a time when they are more profitable than ever. The business and scale of Romania’s largest port remain stuck and without real development prospects, although the current context may give it a blow.

It sounds cynical, but times of crisis and war bring business opportunities. Industry relocates, and enterprises are created. The territorial losses suffered by Ukraine in the war that Vladimir Putin started in the neighboring state have given the port of Constanta a sudden regional importance that Romania has not known how to exploit in the past.

The period is also critical: the first grains have been harvested, Ukraine is traditionally one of the world’s largest exporters. In the absence of access to ports and a minefield in the territorial waters of the Black Sea, a viable alternative would have been to divert Ukrainian wheat to the port of Constanta and load it onto ships from there.

In Constanta, however, it is foggy. The impasse announced in the spring became a self-fulfilling prophecy in the summer. Lines of trucks form quickly, and normal transshipment operations are preceded by days of waiting. Since we are talking about grains and other agricultural products, such delays disrupt the entire harvest campaign within the country.

What hurts Romanian farmers

As a rule, Romanian farmers who export their products set the days when they harvest the grain from the field, in agreement with traders and customers. Combine harvesters were threshing and unloading, right in the field, right into the trucks going to the port. There, the grain went through bureaucratic processing and either went into a silo or directly onto a ship and was sent to importing countries.

Currently, the trucks can only be found at the port, where they wait to be unloaded, and farmers are forced to store grain until they find free cars to transport the goods to Constanta. This means additional costs and risks – the wheat will rot even before it is loaded onto the ship.

And in the case of more sensitive crops such as canola, any extra day the plants are in the field results in a reduced yield that is simply shaken by the wind and wasted.

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