Bunge, a U.S.-based agricultural commodities trader, has agreed to sell its oilseed processing business in Russia.
The CFTS portal reported this, citing the Ports of Ukraine publication.
It will sell the business to Karen Vanetsyan, the controlling shareholder of Exoil Group. The sale includes the company’s sunflower processing plant in Voronezh. The completion of the sale is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval. The terms of the sale were not disclosed.
Bunge completed the construction of the sunflower processing plant in the Voronezh region in 2008. Investments in the project amounted to more than USD 130 million. The plant has the capacity to process 540,000 tons of raw materials annually, which makes it possible to produce over 200 million bottles of sunflower oil per year.
In addition to the plant in the Voronezh region, Bunge is selling the regional rights to its vegetable-oil brands, including Oleina and Ideal.
It was reported earlier that Bunge planned to sell the Bunge CIS company, which includes a processing plant in the Voronezh region, as well as the Oleina, Ideal, and other brands.
Immediately after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Bunge closed its Ukrainian offices and suspended the operations of two oilseed processing plants in Mykolaiv and Dnipro.
Bunge announced in late February that it was scaling back its operations in Russia. It was reported in late March that the company had sold its Rostov grain terminal (Russia). The terminal, which has a capacity of 700,000 tons per year, serves river-sea vessels with up to 5,500 deadweight tons.
Bunge, a multinational company headquartered in White Plains (New York), engages in the purchase, sale, and storage of oil and grain crops; processing of oil crops, wheat, corn, and rice; production of sugar and ethanol; and trading in fertilizer. The company operates in over 40 countries.
It owns the Dnipropetrovsk oil extraction plant (the Oleina and Rozumnytsia brands) and the Suntrade subsidiary (Kyiv) through the Bunge Ukraine company. The company also owns a production and transshipment complex, which includes an oil production plant and an oil and grain transshipment terminal, in the Mykolaiv seaport.
