The Bunge transnational company has invested USD 180 million in the construction of a production and transshipment complex that includes a vegetable-oil production plant, an oil transshipment terminal, and expanded grain terminal capacities, the CFTS correspondent reports. The complex was opened on Wednesday, 15 June, with the participation of President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko.
The project is one of the largest American investments in the agricultural sector of the Ukrainian economy. The new terminal will increase the volume of exports of goods produced in Ukraine and the volume of cargo transshipment at the port by 1 million tons.
The plant for production of vegetable oil is capable of processing 790,000 tons of oilseeds per year (2,400 tons of sunflower and 1,700 tons of soybeans per day). The company’s transshipment capacity has increased by 1.75 million tons of grain, meal, and oil per year.
The Bunge Ukraine company built a transshipment terminal in the Mykolaiv seaport in 2011, thus increasing Ukraine’s grain export capacity by 3 million tons per year. "The total cost of both projects is USD 280 million, and we will continue to invest not only in development of infrastructure and export capacity of Ukrainian ports, but also in the Ukrainian agro-industrial complex as a whole," Bunge Ukraine’s Managing Director Dmytro Horshunov said.
According to him, the USD 180 million was invested over a period of three years. The production and transshipment facilities occupy an area of 4 hectares. The expansion of the terminal’s capacity provides an opportunity to increase the annual cargo transshipment volume by 750,000 tons of grain, 500,000 tons of meal, and 500,000 tons of oil. The facility’s capacity for simultaneous storage is estimated at 37,000 tons of sunflower, 24,000 tons of meal, and 12,500 tons of oil. The company expects the oil processing plant to operate at 100% capacity. The plant can process two crops - soy and sunflower.
Bunge is an agribusiness and food company that operates in approximately 40 countries, employing more than 35,000 people.
Bunge’s main assets in Ukraine are the Dnipropetrovsk oil extraction plant, which produces refined sunflower oil under the Oleina and Rozumnitsia trademarks, and the Suntrade company (Kyiv), which has grain elevators in several regions of Ukraine. In addition to trading grain and oil, the company sells plant protection products and seeds.
