A trainload of grain from Ukraine arrived in Spain as part of a pilot project to explore the possibility of using railroads to transport crops with sea freight routes closed because of the war, the government said on Saturday.
Ukraine is one of the largest grain producing countries and one of its main exporters, with the vast majority of the crop usually exported from its Black Sea ports.
But the Russian invasion of Ukraine at the end of February caused a major disruption in Ukrainian grain exports, causing food prices to skyrocket.
As part of a pilot project to study the possibility of exporting grain from Ukraine by rail on August 9 from Madrid to the Polish city of Chelm, located near the Ukrainian border.
The train consists of 25 containers, each 12 meters long, and carries 600 tons of Ukrainian grain for the return trip to Barcelona, which is 2,400 km from the Polish city.
The train arrived in the Catalan capital on Thursday evening after stopping in Lodz in central Poland and Duisburg in western Germany, according to a statement from the Spanish Ministry of Transport.
“The project allows for a feasibility study of transporting grain by rail as an additional step to maritime transport in a period marked by the ongoing war in Ukraine,” the ministry said in a statement.
“The initiative has shown that in the current conditions, long-distance rail transport requires great efforts to coordinate between the various participants in the process,” the ministry added.
According to the ministry, the containers were equipped with a special lining for grain.
On July 22, Russia and Ukraine signed an agreement, brokered by Turkey and brokered by the UN, to lift the naval blockade imposed by Moscow, which will allow the export of millions of tons of grain stuck in Ukrainian ports, thereby helping to prevent a global food crisis.
Since then, dozens of ships carrying agri-food products have sailed from Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea.
