US farm manager Archer Daniels Midland has purchased two terminals of Constanta Port for EUR 90 M, Digi24 reported on Wednesday, quoting Ziarul Financiar. The American company already had shares at the Romanian companies that owned the two terminals.
Both terminals are currently managing over 5 tons of goods, ranking third and fourth in size in the entire Constanta Port. North Star Shipping and Minmetal terminals can shelter over 280,000 tons of cereals, but can also operate ores, fertilizers, vegetal oil or biodiesel.
Constanta was seen Europe’s emerging biggest grain transport hub in the USD 4.2 billion global wheat trade, attracting farm managers such as Germany’s AIS Europe GmbH, Archer-Daniels-Midland Co., CHS Inc., Cargill Inc. as Bloomberg estimated last year in October.
“Output of grains has gradually increased in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Serbia,” James Hyslop, director for Romania at the European Bank for Reconstruction & Development, said recently. “Constanta port was the main facility to benefit. It’s the only large port with sufficient capacity to serve the region.” Constanta’s potential remains curbed by lack of navigability of the Danube, Europe’s second-longest river after the Volga, according to Beerents of Cibus Farmland Club and Toma Dinu, dean of the faculty of management at Bucharest’s University of Agronomical Sciences.