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LTG Cargo Lithuanian grain season: grain trucks from Ukraine recovered and shipments up by one-fifth

A special train from Ukraine has arrived in Lithuania. LTG Cargo, the freight transport company of the Lithuanian Railways Group, brought a 36-car set of 25 LTG grain wagons, 9 trolley-loaded platforms and 2 shelter wagons from Ukraine to Lithuania. The company’s rolling stock came from areas less affected by the Russian war in Ukraine. It is planned that the recovered wagons will be added to the company’s fleet of its own wagons and those leased to Lithuanian grain growers, as grain transports grow this season.

The wagons from Ukraine destined for the broad gauge were transported on the narrow gauge. In order to ensure a safe and smooth exit of the technical fleet, the grain wagons were transported with special protective shelters at the beginning and the end of the consignment.

Since the start of the Russian war in Ukraine, bringing the remaining LTG Cargo wagons to Lithuania has been extremely difficult due to the different standards of track requirements, customs procedures at the Ukrainian border, and speed restrictions in Poland for this special train. The return of the wagons to Lithuania was carried out in cooperation with subsidiary LTG Cargo Ukraine, as well as Ukrainian Railways and the Polish company PKP Cargo.

“The arrival of these grain trucks is important for two reasons. First of all, it has further strengthened our team’s existing expertise in complex international transports from Ukraine. Moreover, we will be able to add these grain carriers to Lithuania’s capacity for transporting agricultural produce. The need for efficient transport of the country’s agricultural produce is growing — in August this year, we transported as much as a fifth (21%) more than last year. We expect this year’s traffic to reach or even exceed the results for 2021,” says Eglė Šimė, CEO of LTG Cargo.

According to LTG Cargo data, more than 430 thousand tonnes of Lithuanian agricultural products were transported by rail to Klaipėda Seaport in August this year. This compares with around 360,000 shipments at the same time last year. In total, the company transported almost 1.36 million tonnes of Lithuanian grain in 2022 until September and around 2.3 million tonnes in the whole of 2021.

The growth in transport volumes is due to the harvest and active cooperation with customers, as well as to LTG Cargo’s even more efficient formation of wagon formations this year (forming a full train set at one time and one place, without reshaping at intermediate stations), and to the adequately planned capacities required for the transport of these goods by rail.