The geared bulk carrier Jules Point (24,428gt, 36,728 dwt), owned by Pacific Basin Shipping Ltd and built 2013, unloading yellow maize from Yuzhny (Ukraine), a small port to the east of Odessa, at Rosyth on 2 March 2022.
She left Ukraine on 9 February for the 16-day journey to Rosyth. Behind her can be seen the 144-tonne grab mobile harbour crane bought in 2019 to support the unloading of grain for the adjacent Cefetra agri-hub, which has the capacity to store 100,000 tonnes of product.
Ukraine is a major supplier of grain and, over the past year, a number of handymax bulk carriers have brought maize and soya from a number of Ukrainian ports, including Chornomorsk, Mykolaiv and Nika Tera.
Grains are also imported from Canada and elsewhere in Europe while larger 75,000 dwt bulk carriers bring in soya from the Argentine.
Cefetra Ltd is one of the major traders of grains and animal feed raw materials in the UK and Ireland, dispatching between 85,000–90,000 tonnes of raw materials to industry partners every week, delivering 550–600 lorry loads per day.
In February 2022 they announced two new grain stores in Scotland at a cost of in excess of £7 million, securing their position as one of the major traders of grains and animal feed raw materials in the UK and Ireland.
With an annual turnover in excess of £1 billion they supply customers in the animal nutrition, food and drink Industries.
The new stores can accommodate approximately 140,000 tonnes of grains. One of the grain stores, at Ormiston in East Lothian, has a capacity of circa 80,000 tonnes, whilst the other, at Charlesfield in Melrose, in the Scottish Borders, can hold circa 60,000 tonnes.
Jules Point arrived in Rosyth on the same day it was reported that the 2020-built panamax vessel Namura Queen, owned by Japan’s Nissen Kaiun, was hit by a rocket at the anchorage of Yuzhny port on 25 February.
Photo and report by Iain McGeachy
