Freight and supply chains
Artem Zbandut: freight forwarding from Odesa to Europe
Artem Zbandut runs Black Sea Forwarding, the Odesa freight business he set up in 2019. He learnt the trade as a forwarder at the Mariupol Sea Trade Port and went on to take an MBA at Kyiv-Mohyla Business School.
Artem Zbandut's work today
Black Sea Forwarding organises multimodal container freight: a consignment can change modes of transport while staying on a single plan. Most of what the company carries is grain and steel structures.
Artem took the business to a turnover of 2 million US dollars by the end of 2021, two years after founding it. Before that, in the space of four years, he had gone from forwarder at the Mariupol port to head of logistics at a private shipping agency.
Where Zbandut focuses
Container freight across several modes
Grain and steel structures carried in containers, with every leg of the journey organised as one route.
Road haulage and rail into the EU
Supply chains switched in 2022 to road and rail across Ukraine's western borders, quickly enough for the company to keep its main clients.
Offices in Poland and Romania
Branches opened in 2022 during the same overhaul of routes.
A digital freight marketplace
Artem's planned platform for chartering lorries and other freight transport in Eastern Europe, with paperwork and customs clearance handled automatically.
Artem Zbandut and the 2022 overhaul
When Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022 shut the usual sea lanes out of Ukrainian ports, Artem rerouted the company's supply chains onto road and rail links through the western borders. He moved quickly, and the key clients stayed.
That same year Black Sea Forwarding opened branches in Poland and Romania. In 2023 the trade title Logistics and Transport named Artem its Expert of the Year.