Black Sea turbulence. Alternative routes strengthen supply chain resilience for Romania and Bulgaria

Recent drone attacks on merchant vessels near the coasts of Bulgaria and Romania are another example of geopolitical turbulence on key transport routes. So far, we see no restrictions on shipping services to Constanța or Burgas, but the incidents show how quickly conditions on a single route can change. How can companies serving Romania and Bulgaria make their supply chains resilient enough to keep goods flowing if their main port becomes harder to reach?

The safest approach is to prepare alternative routes before they are needed. For us, the first of them is Koper in Slovenia, where SUUS has its own branch. It is an important and fast-growing port on the Adriatic: in 2025, its container terminal handled a record 1.27 million TEU, 12% more than a year earlier. Once fully operational, the second track on the Divača–Koper line, inaugurated in March, will more than double the capacity of the rail link from the Slovenian port. Piraeus in Greece, on the main Asia–Europe shipping lane, is another option.

Ports in the north of the continent receive direct ocean services from Asia and have rail connections to Central and Eastern Europe, so cargo can reach Romania and Bulgaria entirely by land. In Poland, our home market, Gdańsk keeps breaking records, and we see it first-hand: in the first half of 2026, its Baltic Hub container terminal handled almost 1.6 million TEU, 23% more year on year. Hamburg and Bremerhaven in Germany and Rotterdam in the Netherlands are further options. At SUUS, we select services to match each client's needs, so that the route works best for their cargo in terms of cost, transit time and reliability.

Air freight is another alternative, especially for high-value and time-sensitive shipments. The first choice is Bucharest, the local gateway: cargo at Romanian airports grew by more than 13% year on year in the first quarter of 2026. Budapest, the region's largest cargo hub, which handled more than 426,000 tonnes in 2025 and where SUUS also has its own branch, offers additional capacity.

Building resilience also means holding stock closer to the market, and we see clients' interest in this. In Romania, SUUS offers warehouse services, including co-packing and other value-added services, as well as customs clearance, so clients can keep safety stock near their customers in case a sea delivery is delayed.

At SUUS, we specialise in designing logistics to our customers’ individual needs through our Supply Chain Solutions. We can audit, plan, redesign and manage an entire customer’s operations, adapting it as conditions along individual transport corridors evolve. Today, one of the biggest priorities for businesses is ensuring the resilience of their logistics operations. We have a strong presence across the CEECA region and continue to strengthen our position there, operating in Romania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. We manage our customers’ supply chains on a global scale, and our extensive network and multimodal capabilities allow us to shift cargo between routes and modes of transport before disruptions along any given corridor affect our customers’ schedules. Companies that have already diversified their transport options will be in a stronger position if conditions in the Black Sea region tighten further.