A new rail route for importing rolled steel has been launched in Ukraine

The new route could serve as an alternative for importers of rolled steel amid the shelling of Ukrainian ports on the Danube

Ukrainian Railways (UZ), in collaboration with UZ Cargo Poland and its subsidiary «CTS Liski,» has launched a regular freight route between Romania and Ukraine. The new logistics route has already been successfully tested for the import of rolled steel products. This was reported by Ukrainian Railways.

The first successful case for the service was the comprehensive transport of sheet steel via a direct connection:

Point of departure: Port of Constanta (Romania).
Transit: Halmeu–Dyakovo border crossings.
Point of destination: Perechin Station (Transcarpathia, Ukraine).

To implement the project, 60-foot flatbed platforms with wooden floors were shipped from the Chop-Liski station to the Port of Constanta. A key feature of the route is the bogie-switching technology: the platforms are transferred from 1,520 mm gauge to 1,435 mm gauge without reloading the cargo itself.

This makes it possible to:

1. Point of departure: Port of Constanța (Romania).
2. Transit: Halmeu–Dyakovo border crossing.
3. Point of destination: Perechin Station (Transcarpathia, Ukraine).

To implement the project, 60-foot flatbed platforms with wooden floors were shipped from the Chop-Liski station to the Port of Constanta. A key feature of the route is the bogie-changing technology: the platforms are transferred from 1,520 mm gauge to 1,435 mm gauge without reloading the cargo itself.

This makes it possible to:

• avoid additional operations involving the unloading and reloading of cargo;
• reduce costs for transshipment and related materials;
• significantly speed up border crossing.

Replacing the bogies takes only a few hours, which is significantly faster than the traditional process of transloading from one type of railcar to another.

The new route could serve as an alternative for importers of rolled steel products amid the ongoing shelling of Ukrainian ports on the Danube, which is causing damage to port infrastructure, vessels, and cargo.

As a reminder, in 2025, the volume of rail freight transport for the iron and steel sector fell by 4.6% year-on-year, or by 3.7 million tons, to 76.5 million tons. In January–March 2026, the figure decreased by 14.7% year-on-year, or by 2.6 million tons, to 15.3 million tons. The main factor was a sharp drop in iron ore exports by 2.6 million tons (-31% year-on-year).

As reported by GMK Center, Ukrainian Railways increased its export shipments of ferrous steel by 13% year-on-year – to 5.8 million tons last year.  For comparison: in 2024, ferrous steel shipments increased by 13.7% compared to 2023, reaching 5.2 million tons.