Ukrainian Railways has launched a programme to sell scrap in the form of worn-out carriages

In May, Ukrainian Railways (UZ) launched its previously announced programme to sell large quantities of old freight wagons for scrap, to be cut up by the buyers themselves. An appraiser has already been selected. The total scrap yield from this initiative is expected to amount to 130,000 tonnes of scrap. Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, Chairman of the Board of JSC Ukrainian Railways, spoke about this during a press conference in comments to GMK Center.

Last month, the state-owned carrier effectively began selling the carriages for scrap.

‘The initiative has already been announced; consultations have been held with metallurgical enterprises. Valuation procedures are currently underway: following the tender, a valuer has been selected for the first lot. The expected yield of scrap from the railcars to be sold is approximately 130,000 tonnes. As previously stated, the railcars will be sold on market terms,” said Oleksandr Pertsovskyi.

This year, Ukrainian Railways plans to sell a total of 330,000 tonnes of scrap metal under two programmes: 200,000 tonnes under the direct scrap metal sales programme and around 130,000 tonnes under the railway carriage sales programme.

In total, during the first quarter of this year, Ukrainian Railways sold 75.1 thousand tonnes of scrap metal for 509 million UAH at Prozorro auctions. This is more than in the whole of 2025, when 62.8 thousand tonnes of scrap metal were sold.

It should be recalled that Ukrainian Railways resumed scrap metal auctions in 2025 following a break of almost two years, against the backdrop of the company’s deteriorating financial situation. The sale of scrap metal has become one of the main domestic sources of revenue.