Ukraine is geographically favorably located for the transit of cargo from the countries of Northern and Central Europe, from Scandinavia and the Baltic States to the countries of the Indian Ocean basin, Southeast Asia and the entire Asia-Pacific region. Romanian specialists were the first to assess the prospects of this cargo flow. The port of Constanta immediately after the war had a water area of 50 hectares. The first stage of development completed in the 60s of the last century added 200 hectares. The last one already amounted to 2000 hectares. Then various berths were built. But western cargo owners did not really rush to Romania, because Ukrainian ports are in a more favorable position compared to Romanian ports.

In February 2022, when Ukrainian ports closed, a huge cargo flow went to the port of Constanta. A little later, cargoes destined for Ukraine started to be delivered via Constanta, Gdynia, Gdansk and Istanbul.

Some freight forwarding/logistics firms preferred to suspend their activities and leave the country, and those who remained faced new challenges: how to deliver cargo to their customers in the new reality. Knowledge, experience and connections gained over the years helped us to completely reorganize our work at once. Our customers’ shipments were delivered safely, as quickly and inexpensively as possible. We acted as if our possibilities were limitless. Delivery was carried out by cars through the border crossings “Porubnoye” and “Orlovka”, container trains, a little later by barges.

Why did I write all this? To understand the tasks that logistics solves. Here I will mention in turn Logistician or Forwarder, which in this text is one and the same.

A logistician is a person who manages the process of cargo delivery. The logistician represents the interests of the client before customs, controlling authorities such as “quarantine”, “veterinary control”. and “veterinary control”. port representatives, carriers.

So, you are the head of the company decided to get a new audience (new markets) and entered the international market. You need to send or receive cargo. You can try to contact a shipping line yourself and even conclude a contract. But which shipping line to choose, because each has its own advantages and disadvantages? What if an inspection is scheduled in the port of Constanta? Will the representative of the shipping line be able to quickly organize this inspection, if the ship simultaneously comes a thousand containers. Or, for example, you need to organize the transshipment of your goods from a container to a car or vice versa. Who will organize this process, draw up the necessary papers in customs and control the movers? And what documents should be submitted to customs and how to properly issue a transit declaration? And if something happens to the cargo, who will protect your interests and advise you on all the nuances ? For example, the shipping line damaged the container during unloading from the ship and as a result part of the grain from the container was scattered in the port of Istanbul. In our practice there was also a case when the Shipper deceived the Consignee by underloading the product in each container. The issue of shortage was quickly resolved thanks to the forwarder’s control over transportation: GPS navigator + weighing of the container in the port.

It is still better to entrust the organization of cargo delivery to professionals.

It’s no secret that our customs likes to schedule weighing of containers with imported cargo. They have such a form of control. What if there is more cargo in the container than declared in the documents and you decided to save on duty? But this story is not about imports.

We will talk about the pride of Ukrainian exports – sunflower oil and chicken.

Our company organized the delivery of two 40-foot containers with bottled sunflower oil. Shipper – Kernel Company, transportation route Poltava – Odessa port – port of Beirut (Lebanon). Loaded containers were delivered to the container terminal of the Odessa port “Brooklyn – Kiev Port” company. So what’s the big deal? From the outside the ordinary transportation. In each container at the declared 26 tons was missing 10 tons of oil. The drivers, knowing that the containers will be weighed, forged certificates of weighing – “weight”. However, they did not take into account that the weighing data are in the port database and are available to the forwarder. Then the police were called and a criminal case was filed. The drivers were of course detained, but then released, as they found common ground with the prosecutor.

This story was widely publicized. And yet few freight forwarding companies have made conclusions and today weigh their customers’ cargoes. Therefore, from time to time there are stories when instead of sunflower oil in flexitanks in the ports of destination comes water. But the density of water and oil is different, and the scales will certainly show the difference in the declared and actual weight of the cargo in the container.

The weighing procedure is quite simple. It is enough to send an application to the port, and the vehicle with and without container will be weighed, and the results of weighing can be seen online. Here is another example. It happened during the loading of frozen chicken at one of the warehouses of MHP in Odessa. As a result of weighing, there was a discrepancy of 500 kg between the weight indicated in the documents and the actual weight of the cargo in the container. We informed MHP, the warehouse promptly conducted an inspection and it was found that some boxes were underloaded. The unfortunate incident was settled. Our favorite customer, who was the recipient of the shipment, did not suffer any damage.