The main thing the buyer is interested in is buying grain that will have the lowest price when delivered to the importer's port. The price of grain delivered to the importer's port is called the C&F basis. Now the CIF-Egypt price is about $256/t.
Exporting countries need to travel a different route to this port, so freight costs are at your own expense. For example, according to close calculations, the freight from Australia to Egypt is $32/t. For our neighboring Romania, it is twice as cheap — about $16-18/ton. This price excluding freight is called FOB.
We rewind the path of the grain one more step back. Grain has to be loaded onto a ship - before the full-scale invasion it cost $10/t. The CPT exit price was the delivery basis that was most popular with farmers selling for export (for foreign exchange). This basis now replaces DAP/DDP - same place of delivery, but different payment terms and area of grain responsibility.
So the answer to the question "what price should have been at the port" depends on all the costs that follow the grain from the moment of delivery to the port of the exporter to the port of the importer. In the period before the full-scale invasion, our freight cost was almost identical to the Romanian one, since we have to travel almost the same way (both in length and in Bosphorus tolls).
So we have the "perfect" math: C&F-Egypt $256/t - $16/t (freight) - $10/t transshipment = $230/t CPT-Odesa.
But we have a full-scale war with Russia, which intimidates agribusiness participants with its attacks on port infrastructure. This reduces the number of shipowners who are willing to risk crew and ship, so they need to be "lured" with war risk rewards. Because of this, freight from Odesa can be several times more expensive than from Constantia — $40/t versus $16/t. Transshipment in Odesa is also more expensive than in the hour when everything worked like clockwork, all berths were booked weeks in advance, and grain was accumulated at port elevators. Now all this is a risk caused by the terror of Russia. So there are a lot of fixed costs, and the flow of ships and security measures limit the capacity of the terminals. Because of this, transshipment is much more expensive and currently costs about $27/t. At various stages of the logistics chain, operators make a profit on the market.
So instead of the ideal $230/t we now have the following math: C&F-Egypt $256/t - $40/t (freight) - $27+/t transshipment - $12/t other market operators = $177/t CPT - Odessa.
Such prices can be expected if seaports earn at least at the level they were last fall (with the Grain Corridor). So far, not enough ships have left the ports and these are only the first steps, and not the full operation of the ports, so all related costs are much higher, which will be reflected in lower purchase prices. However, already yesterday and today we saw the prices, which seem much more interesting to farmers from the central regions of Ukraine than when they were staged on the Danube or Constanta.