Ukrzaliznytsya promises to improve transportation planning next year

The economic model of the cargo direction of Ukrzaliznytsia will continue to be based not on super - profits from the hype increase in the cost of transportation during the peak period, but on partnership relations with cargo owners, " said Yuriy Shchuklin, adviser to the chairman of the management board of Ukrzaliznytsia and an expert on the logistics market.

To improve our work, the company's management has strengthened its work in the following areas::

• activation of sales of grain wagons rental for a long planning horizon (until the end of 2022),
• revision of relations with owners of agricultural cargo and grain elevators,
• changes in the regulatory framework and components of automated transportation management systems.

Experts said that due to the high increase in the cost of grain transportation, it became necessary to create a digital platform for data exchange between UZ, owners of a private mobile fleet and owners of agricultural cargo, which will take into account the load on infrastructure and record the responsibilities of participants in logistics chains.

Now cargo owners are planning transportation without having information about the transportation capacity of the railway and the physical possibility of shipping products. Due to chaotic planning, transportation is then carried out on the principle of "who pays more".

Therefore, the problem can be solved by creating an automated platform where cargo owners will be able to contract cargo transportation by rail already when concluding transactions with grain buyers. The obligations of participants in the logistics chain will be fixed here: the port's obligations to accept cargo, Ukrzaliznytsia's obligations to transport it, and the rolling stock owner's obligations to provide wagons. A condition for introducing new relations between logistics market participants will be a change in the regulatory framework and the Charter of the state carrier.

Adviser to the chairman of the management board of UZ said that the company's management plans to significantly improve interaction with the agricultural market next year, so it introduces changes that the situation requires: open data, mutual responsibility of participants in the logistics process, early transportation planning, creating a platform for distributing transportation, capacity of both UZ and private operators.

At the same time, UZ understands that it will meet resistance from individual market participants who still had profits in chaos, so they prevented the introduction of changes. However, the establishment of direct links between UZ and grain elevators and agricultural holdings will displace intermediary freight forwarders from the market.