New routes for postal wagons in Ukraine
The development of rail shipment of parcels is gaining momentum in Ukraine. It’s only been slightly more than a week since launching this kind of service by Ukrzalisnytsia and Ukrposhta, the national railway and postal operators, between Kyiv and Lviv, while they have put into operation three new routes. As a result, postal wagons move parcels between the five largest cities in the country.
Starting from 9 April, Ukrzaliznytsia (Ukrainian Railway) and Ukrposhta (Ukrainian Post) are jointly running rail shipments of parcels on three new routes: from Kyiv to Odesa, Kharkiv and Dnipro. Earlier, on 1 April, the partners after the 21-year-long break launched the first connection for postal wagons in Ukraine, namely between Kyiv and Lviv. According to the railway undertaking, each wagon can move up to 2,400 parcels per shipment. Therefore, around 140,000 parcels can be transported by rail weekly on all four routes.
Combined shipments
The rail postal service, which was jointly developed by Ukrzaliznytsia and Ukrposhta, is dedicated to delivering parcels from ordinary customers and humanitarian aid from volunteers. One shipment weighing up to 30 kilogrammes and with the longest side up to 70 centimetres costs only 25 hryvnia. Payment at the expense of the recipient is not possible. The parcel can be stored in the destination city for up to 14 days. Meanwhile, there are discounted and even free rates for delivering humanitarian aid. Its cost will be covered by raising funds from charitable foundations.
“We have an increasing number of tasks – in addition to parcels, we deliver humanitarian aid, help with the relocation of enterprises, and to do all this, we are looking for options to strengthen our logistics network. Therefore, rail delivery is a necessary and timely solution so that we have additional ways to deliver postal items, especially humanitarian ones, which are in great need. Therefore, we return to this type of delivery and I am grateful to my colleagues from Ukrzaliznytsia who were able to quickly prepare postal wagons and organise the delivery of items,” said Ihor Smilianskyi, CEO of Ukrposhta.