Agriculture, Cargo, Latvia, Markets and Companies, Railways, Transport

She indicated that this year's grain harvesting season started last week in Latvia, which is a bit later than last year, but thanks to favorable weather conditions, which facilitated maturing of grain, farmers are projecting a record-large grain harvest. Latvijas Dzelzcels' subsidiary LDz Cargo is therefore preparing to carry more grain this season than in the summer of 2019. 

Petermane said that the grain shipping season is expected to peak in August and September but that grain transportation will continue also in October. According to current forecasts, this year LDz Cargo might carry 5 to 10 percent more grain by rail than a year ago when 569,173 tons of grain cargo were carried from July to October. Together with import grain cargo, the total amount shipped by rail last year was 1.7 million tons, an increase of 9.4 percent against 2018. 

LDz CEO Maris Kleinbergs noted that the transportation of transit cargo decreased in the first seven months of 2020 due to changes in global markets. 

"At the same time, this situation is a stimulus to develop domestic cargo shipping even more, thus increasing cargo turnover and supporting one of Latvia's most important agricultural branches - grain farming," said Kleinbergs.