The Ukrlandfarming agricultural holding plans to begin construction of a transshipment terminal at the Yuzhny port in July this year. Oleg Bakhmatiuk, the head of Ukrlandfarming’s board of directors and its principal owner, announced this to journalists in Kiev on Wednesday, May 13, the Interfax Ukraine news agency reports.
According to him, the pace of the construction work will be slow because of a liquidity crisis. "We will start ‘digging in.’ We want to put an elevator with at least 100,000 tons and begin work on the first berth. However, because of the monetary vacuum in the country, we have revised our plans regarding the speed of movement, i.e. the speed will be less by at least two times," said Bakhmatiuk.
In addition, he said that the agricultural holding retains its plans to complete the construction of a number of elevators by the end of 2015, bringing the total storage capacity to 3.5 million tons of grain. "We are completing our CAPEX program. We will have 3.5 million tons (of grain elevator capacity) by the end of the year. We are finishing their construction, which is very difficult at the current time... It will be the biggest elevator network in Ukraine," said Bakhmatiuk.
Bakhmatiuk also said that the holding company plans to spend about USD 100 million on completion of the elevator project and beginning of the port project this year.
As reported earlier, Ukrlandfarming announced in 2013 that it intended to build a feed mill and a grain elevator complex with a combined storage capacity of 2 million tons of grain and a feed production capacity of 1.9 million tons per year in 12 regions of Ukraine within two years. According to Bakhmatiuk, it will take approximately 14 years - instead of the seven years that were initially predicted - to recoup the investment in the project because of the devaluation of the hryvnia.
Ukrlandfarming is the largest agricultural holding company in Eurasia. It engages in cultivation of grain, production of eggs, egg products, and sugar, breeding of cattle, as well as in distribution of equipment, fertilizer, and seeds seeds.
The holding company consists of 15 modern elevators, 216 horizontal grain elevators, five seed plants, 19 poultry farms, 10 farms for breeding laying hens, three sow farms, three breeding farms, six feed mills, the Imperovo Foods egg product factory, three long-term storage warehouses, six sugar refineries, 19 meat processing plants, and two tanneries.
Ukrlandfarming manages 653,000 hectares of land. It plans to harvest 3.6-3.7 million tons of crops in 2015.
