The cargo ship Alppila with 18,000 tons of Ukrainian corn arrived on the morning of June 13 at the port of A Coruña in northwestern Spain.
According to the CNN agency, citing the press service of the port, this is the first shipment of Ukrainian grain to reach the north-west of Spain by sea using "a new maritime route through the Baltic Sea to avoid the Russian navy’s blockade of Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea since the start of the war" in February last year.
Agafac, a regional group of Galician animal feed producers, said in a statement that "small quantities of corn have left western Ukraine in trucks for Poland and Romania."
Before arriving in Spain, the corn was loaded onto a ship in the Polish port of Świnoujście on the Baltic Sea, the company stresses.
"It’s just a small amount of corn but it recovers the possibility to import whatever’s possible from Ukraine," Agafac director Bruno Beade told CNN by phone.
According to Beade, he didn’t know if Ukrainian corn had arrived at any other Spanish ports since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began.
Typically Agafac imports 40% of corn from Ukraine between January and June each year, which is part of the total 1 million tons of corn it imports for livestock feed annually.
According to vesselfinder.com, Alppila is a Finnish-flagged cargo ship that was in Świnoujście at the end of May, then made stops at two German ports before arriving at the port of A Coruña on Monday.
reported earlier that, under Russia’s naval blockade, Ukraine has established two grain export channels — through Poland and Romania, and is also negotiating with the Baltic states.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry notes that the routes are not ideal, but Ukraine is doing everything possible to develop them.
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