At the end of 2022, Kernel Agro-Industrial Holding acquired a strategically important asset, the OilExport Terminal, from the Pivdennyi port in Odesa region for $19.8 million, as it reported in its financial report the day before.
As the company reported on Facebook on Wednesday, the terminal with silos with a total capacity of 49.4 thousand tons of simultaneous storage of the main types of vegetable oils can accept and separately store sunflower, soybean, and rapeseed oil.
At the same time, it is noted that the new asset is strategically important for Kernel given the current inability to transship vegetable oil through terminals in the port of Mykolaiv, which accounted for about half of the total transshipment of this product in Ukraine in 2019-2022 marketing years.
“Mykolaiv is of historical importance in this regard. Due to the full-scale war, the city’s port and terminals have been shut down, and they are currently outside the grain corridor. Therefore, we are compensating for temporary losses at the expense of OilExportTerminal in Pivdennyi,” explained Yevhen Osipov, CEO of the holding, as quoted by the press service.
As reported, Kernel said in its financial report that it acquired OilExportTerminal in December 2022.
The holding also clarified that in the first half of FY2023 (July-2022 – December-2022) it sold 546.8 thousand tons of sunflower and rapeseed oil (-14% compared to the same period in FY2022) and processed 1.11 million tons of oilseeds (-24%).
“Prior to the war, Kernel was the world’s largest producer of sunflower oil (approximately 7% of global production) and its exports (approximately 12%), and was the largest producer and seller of bottled sunflower oil in Ukraine. In addition, the company was engaged in the cultivation and sale of other agricultural products.
The largest co-owner of Kernel through Namsen Ltd. is Ukrainian businessman Andriy Verevsky with a 39.3% stake.
In fiscal year 2022 (FY, July-2021-June-2022), the holding made a net loss of $41 million against a net profit of $506 million in the previous year, its revenue decreased by 5% to $5.332 billion, and EBITDA decreased by 3.7 times to $220 million.
