Polish Broker’s Corn Train Stuck at Dorohusk Border Crossing

A train carrying more than 2,000 tonnes of corn has been stranded at Poland’s Dorohusk border crossing, putting a shipment bound for Iceland at risk. Polish customs officials are refusing to allow the open-top hopper wagons through, saying the cargo could be too easily removed from them.

The corn, ordered by Polish company Daku, weighs 2,100 tonnes and is worth 400,000 euros. It is supposed to cross Poland in transit to Szczecin, where a ship is waiting to take it to Iceland. Transit remains permitted under Polish rules, even though a 2023 regulation bans imports of grain and corn.

Dariusz Kutzias, president of Daku International, told Rzeczpospolita that customs officials had accepted hopper wagons carrying rapeseed at other crossings only days earlier. He said crossings such as Żurawica-Medyka still clear such wagons, while Dorohusk no longer does so. Changing the train to another type of wagon is not possible because PKP cannot provide replacements.

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Other border points, such as Żurawica-Medyka, still clear hopper wagons

Kutzias said nobody had informed the company of a change in the guidelines. He added that most Ukrainian grain transit through Poland, both this year and between 2022 and 2024, used the same type of wagon now being rejected.

The wagons must reach DB Port in Szczecin on the morning of Sept. 7. If they do not, Kutzias said the company will have to buy more expensive corn domestically and pay for the ship to wait for loading. He estimates the resulting costs at about half a million zlotys. The report also says customs authorities have provided a response, but does not include it in the available text.

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The Ukrainian supplier of our corn went to extraordinary lengths to deliver the goods on time to the border for our ship, and Polish customs officials, through interpretations of the rules known only to themselves, are undoing all that effort by refusing to accept Polish wagons for transshipment