Market News & Headlines >> Ukraine Grain Ship Reaches Turkey

The first grain vessel to leave Ukraine’s  under a new agreement providing safe passage through the Black Sea for Ukrainian grain exports safely anchored off Turkey's coast on Tuesday.

The Razoni, carrying 26,527 metric tons of corn destined for Lebanon, anchored near the Bosphorus entrance from the Black Sea at around 1800 GMT (1:00 p.m. CT), some 36 hours after departing from Ukraine's Odesa port, Reuters News Service reported.

A delegation from the Joint Coordination Centre (JCC) in Istanbul, where Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish and U.N. personnel work, is expected to inspect the ship at 0700 GMT (2:00 a.m. CT) on Wednesday, according to Turkey's Defense Ministry.

"We hope that there will be some more outbound movement tomorrow," U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York. "This is delicate, complex and complicated, but there are other movements planned." Dujarric said there were about 27 ships in the three Ukrainian ports covered by the export deal that had been "sitting in port for a long time with cargo,...with contracts signed, ready to go."

"The plan is for a ship to leave...every day," a senior Turkish official told Reuters, referring to Odesa and the two other Ukrainian ports covered by the deal. "If nothing goes wrong, exports will be made via one ship a day for a while."