Can Ukrainian grain be shipped to the world via Croatia?

Subject: International Relations

Section: Places in news

Context:

Ukraine announced that Croatia had agreed to allow Ukrainian grain to be exported via its ports on the Danube and the Adriatic Sea.

Huge logistical challenges:

Ukrainian grain can be shipped via two Ukrainian ports on the Danube: Izmail and Reni.
Another option would be to ship the grain via the Black Sea to the Romanian port of Constanta and from there to the River Danube.
- The grain would then have to be transported 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) upstream to the Croatian Danube river port of Vukovar.

Does Vukovar have the capacity?

The port in Vukovar is small. It is currently capable of handling a maximum 1.2 million tons of freight per annum.
This capacity does not relate to bulk freight (such as grain) alone but to all freight, including containers.
Moreover, Vukovar currently has only one silo that could be used to store grain and it has a capacity of just 10,000 tons.
According to the European Union, Ukraine exported over 30 million tons of grain and other foodstuffs as part of the Black Sea Grain Initiative between August 2022 and May 2023.
It took over 1,080 ships to transport this volume of freight.

How would Croatia transport this huge volume of grain to the Adriatic ports of Rijeka, Zadar or Split?

Even large trucks can transport no more than 45 tons of freight at a time.
More than 22,000 such trucks would be needed to transport one million tons of grain.
Rail transport is another option but Crotia has not a well developed railways system.

Does it really solve the wheat crisis?

Wheat is currently selling for about €350 ($385) per ton on the world market and maize for €260.
Even if Croatia did manage to ship one million tons of grain, this would bring a profit of just €300 million.
Much of this would not go to Ukrainian farmers.

Croatia:

Croatia shares borders with Slovenia and Hungary to the north, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina to the east, Montenegro to the south, and it also shares a sea border with Italy on the west.

Black Sea:

There are six countries with coastlines on the Black Sea (clockwise), Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Turkey (Türkiye), Bulgaria, and Romania.