Russia's Black Sea port Novorossiysk, the country's main grain export outlet, isn't loading grain on ships March 4 and March 5, the port authority said Monday.

The reason for the suspension is bad weather, and the port authority has asked the national railway authority RZhD not to transport grain to the port during these two days.

The port has grain throughput capacity of 4 million metric tons a year. In February the port handled 530,000 metric tons of wheat, 90,400 tons of barley and 98,181 tons of corn. Wheat throughput in February was 13% less than in January this year. The barley throughput was 68% more than in January, and the corn throughput was 7.5 times the amount handled in January.

-By Grigori Gerenstein; contributing to Dow Jones Newswires;

gerenstein@hotmail.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 05, 2012 04:30 ET (09:30 GMT)