Do river terminals on the Dnipro have potential?

Director of customs brokerage and consulting company Port Clearance
Alexander Gladilin

Effective as of January 1, 2022, the Law “On Inland Water Transport” gave a powerful impulse to the development of coastal infrastructure on the Dnipro. The owners of small river transshipment complexes began to actively obtain customs statuses for their territories, preparing for this date.

So, over the past couple of months, Port Clearance has received several requests from the owners of small coastal terminals on the Dnipro. It can be seen that the approval of the long-suffering Law “On IWT” pushed businesses to invest in river infrastructure.

We have extensive experience in opening customs infrastructure facilities (TCCZ (Temporary Custom Control Zone), TS (Temporary Storage), СW (Customs Warehouse), etc.), and our preliminary assessments of such complexes showed that there are a sufficient number of terminals on the Dnipro river, which in the future can become niche players in the cargo transshipment market on the Dnipro and drag certain cargo flows.

Most often, we talk about the opening of a Temporary Customs Control Zone (TCCZ) or a customs warehouse on the territory of the transshipment complex. Such customs facilities will make it possible to handle import and export cargo from / to river vessels, store them under customs control on the territory of the complex, and get away from transshipment at anchor (at roads) by loading sea vessels directly at their berth.

Opening a checkpoint across the border of Ukraine at such river terminals is a laborious and time-consuming procedure, and also expensive. The terminal will be able to start working with sea vessels immediately after the opening of the TCCZ. It will make it possible to handle, under the control of customs, cargoes from cars or wagons that are cleared for export by internal customs. If the goods were not previously placed in export mode, this can also be easily organized directly at the terminal.

However, if the terminal wants to offer cargo owners services for the accumulation of large vessel lots, the terminal will have to open a customs warehouse. The warehouse will allow to temporarily store export and transit cargo under customs control for a long time. This will eliminate the need to transship cargo only by the direct option car / wagon – vessel, and will make the terminal more flexible in terms of the range of services.

Of course, it will be difficult for such complexes to compete with large terminals on the territory of the seaports of Mykolaiv, Kherson, Dnipro, which have the status of a checkpoint across the state border of Ukraine, which allows foreign vessels to open and close the border, and more impressive transshipment capacities. However, small private terminals that do not have cumbersome bureaucratic procedures, as in state ports, can quickly open a customs warehouse or TCCZ, expand or narrow their area. To do this, they only need well-established communication with a nearby customs post, and, of course, the professional recommendations of our team.