Ukrainian business loses about $450,000 daily due to queues at Sulina
4.09.2026 - 17:25
About 90% of ships waiting to pass through the canal are already on demurrage.
Ukrainian business loses about $450,000 daily due to queues on the Sulinsky Canal. This is reported by Avalon Shipping Operations Manager Kateryna Kononenko.
If 90 ships are waiting at the roadstead, and the average demurrage rate is only $5,000 per day per ship, the total losses reach $450,000 daily. At the same time, about 90% of ships in the queue are already on demurrage.
“Ukrainian business loses almost half a million dollars daily,” Kononenko emphasizes.
The key issue, according to her, is no longer the number of ships in the queue, but the duration of the wait. And here the difference depending on the destination is significant. Ships heading to the Ukrainian ports of Reni, Izmail, and Kiliya wait 12 to 16 days to pass through Sulina. For the Romanian ports of Galati, Braila, and Tulcea, the wait is 3–4 days, and for the Moldovan port of Giurgiuleşti, it is 4–5 days.
Thus, a ship to a Ukrainian port is idle three to four times longer than a ship to a Romanian one.
“And it’s not just about the queue. It’s about the cost of Ukrainian exports,” Kononenko concludes.
As we’ll recall, she previously estimated that a ten-day wait in Sulina adds about $10 per ton to the cost of transportation. For a 5,000-ton shipment, 20 days of downtime cost about $100,000.
