Bloomberg | 9 December 2025

By Pyotr Kozlov

Al Dahra Holding is ending grain trading in Romania, underscoring pressures faced by international merchants in a crowded and competitive Black Sea market.

The Emirati agribusiness group plans to wind down local trading operations in 2026, according to people familiar with the matter, after posting losses in three consecutive years. Al Dahra will continue to operate its farming and fertilizer businesses in the country, said the people, who asked not to be identified as they were not authorized to discuss internal company matters.

Al Dahra’s exit highlights a turnaround in market dynamics in one of the European Union’s top grain exporters. International merchants were drawn to Romania after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 rerouted trade flows in the region, with the port of Constanta becoming a key transit hub.

But as Ukraine regained access to the Black Sea route, volumes dropped, leaving more traders competing for less grain. That squeezed margins and boosted costs for traders, according to Gabriel Razi, an analyst at Romanian consultancy AgroBrane. US crop trader Andersons Inc. quit grain sourcing in Romania earlier this year.

“Trading became a survival game where only the strong survive,” Razi said by phone.

Al Dahra representatives didn’t reply to emailed requests for comment and calls to the Abu Dhabi headquarters on Tuesday went unanswered. The Bucharest office requested that inquiries be sent by email and has yet to reply.

The company’s trading arm posted about 123 million Romanian leu ($28.1 million) in losses between 2022 and 2024, according to figures from Romania’s finance ministry.

Al Dahra entered Romania in 2018 by acquiring Agricost, with its more than 50,000-hectare (123,552-acre) farm. At the time, it pledged to invest $500 million. The Romanian grain trading office opened in 2020, according to the company website. It runs a joint venture with Morocco’s OCP SA to supply fertilizers to Romanian farmers.