Ukrainian Railways, also known as Ukrzaliznytsia, in January-July 2018 expanded its grain hopper car fleet by 22 percent, or about 3,300 cars; it now possesses up to 18,500 hopper cars, the state-owned company reported last week.
Acting Board Chairman of Ukrzaliznytsia Yevhen Kravtsov said that private owners of rolling stock also expanded their grain hopper car fleet.
“Only since the beginning of the year they purchased 1,056 hopper grain cars from domestic car building plants, which are 26 units more than for the entire of 2017. All these are eloquent results of the wagon component deregulation carried out in spring,” Kravtsov said.
Acting Ukrzaliznytsia CEO Yevgen Kravtsov talks with the Kyiv Post in the railway monopoly’s Kyiv headquarters on Feb. 14. (Kostyantyn Chernichkin)
In addition, according to him, in the 2018-2019 fiscal year, Ukrzaliznytsia intends to change the concept of transportation of grain cargo.
“We need to increase the number of consignments of grain cargo per day from 10 to 20. These shipments will cover 80 percent of the existing fleet, which will reduce the turnover of the car in operation, both in the loaded and unloaded state, restrict cargo owners in wanting to use the company’s wagons as warehouses on wheels in port stations, and in general, the routing will increase the number of grain transportation for the planned month,” Kravtsov said.
The head of Ukrzaliznytsia also said that thanks to the organization of routing the market will be able to effectively plan transportation.
