“The second quarter of 2022 was unusual in one regard. As a result of the blockade of Ukrainian ports, a large part of the local grain was exported by rail through Poland. The transport of this commodity in our country was a record since the publication of the quarterly results of the commodity groups. More than 1 million tonnes of grain were transported, which is 600,000 tonnes more than in the first quarter of 2022. A very good result was also achieved in the transport of metals and metal products as well as iron ore,” announced Dr Ignacy Góra, President of the Railway Transport Authority.

A few days ago, the President of the Management Board of PKP S.A. said that the circumstances occurring in Ukraine in recent months had led to cooperation between the PKP Group and the Ukrainian Railways on an unprecedented scale. He added that since the second quarter of this year there has been a successive, multiple increase in freight transport at Polish-Ukrainian railway border crossings, especially in the context of grain imports to EU countries.

The Railway Transport Office also presented aggregated data showing that in the second quarter of 2022. “62.8 million tonnes of freight were transported and transport of 15.9 billion tonne-kilometres was carried out”. This result is nearly 0.5 million tonnes and 1.4 billion tonne-kilometres better than Q1 2022. Coal, lignite, crude oil and natural gas accounted for the largest share (32.2 %) of the carried cargo weight. The largest increase in the weight compared to Q1 2022 (more than 2.6 million tonnes) occurred in the group of metal ores, mining and quarrying products.

The data shows that in Q2 2022. 64% of the weight of goods was carried by domestic traffic, 20% by imports, 13% by exports and 3% by transit. According to freight work, this was 56%, 15%, 22% and 8% respectively. A large increase in imports and transit was observed for some cargo categories. This was related to the current situation in Ukraine.

Adrian Andrzejewski