Andrey Stavnitser, CEO of TIS, a major Odesa region port terminal, said his father, Aleksey, stopped handling ammonium nitrate in 2008 for safety reasons.

Andrey Stavnitser, CEO of TIS, a major Odesa region port terminal, said his father, Aleksey, stopped handling ammonium nitrate in 2008 for safety reasons. Andrey Stavnitser wrote on Facebook that TIS used to transship 3 million tons a year, sometimes storing as much as 200,000 tons at one time. The Beirut explosion is traced to the storage of 2,750 tons in a warehouse.