Interpipe is testing rail deliveries via Poland

The Ukrainian company Interpipe is testing a new logistics route for delivering products to EU countries using rail and road transport, in particular through a terminal in Poland.

“Interpipe is currently carrying out test deliveries of pipes by rail to a broad-gauge terminal in the Polish city of Chelm,” the company’s director of procurement and logistics, Alexey Yanovsky, told the Ukrainian Center for Transport Strategies (CTS). “The products are then loaded onto trucks and delivered to their final destination in Europe.”

Interpipe also looked very closely at the possibility of using the Danube to supply EU countries. “However, unfortunately, the current level of service does not allow it to compete with direct road transport, either from an economic point of view or in terms of transit time,” he adds.

“This method is relatively economically justified, given the current level of tariffs for cars, but has a number of disadvantages, in particular, the issue of combating rust on the surface of pipes arises,” says Yanovsky. “However, it is unlikely that such a delivery method will be acceptable for railway products due to the extreme sensitivity of these products to storage and transportation conditions. For rail wheels and wheelsets, direct road transport is likely to remain the most viable delivery route to consumers in Europe.”

Interpipe previously said it was trying to reach pre-war production levels by developing the Interpipe Niko Tube product range (see Kallanish passim). Pre-war production was about 70,000 tons per month, compared to 50,000 tons/m today.

In January-June, Interpipe produced almost 43,500 tons of railway wheels, which is a significant increase compared to last year.

In 2023, 387 thousand tons of pipes and 95 thousand tons of railway products were supplied.