Astarta Agro-Industrial Holding, the country’s largest sugar producer, has allocated 29% of its production area to winter crops, according to a report on the Warsaw Stock Exchange on Thursday.
According to the report, winter wheat was sown on 49 thousand hectares, up 14% from a year earlier, and winter rapeseed on 12 thousand hectares, down 12% from last year.
“During the sowing campaign, the area under winter wheat was adjusted from 54 thou hectares to 49 thou hectares due to dry weather conditions to complete the sowing campaign in the optimal time,” the agroholding explained.
At the same time, oilseed harvesting is nearing completion. The gross harvest of sunflower amounted to 83 thsd tonnes with a yield of 3.0 t/ha, which is the same as last year, and soybeans – 169 thsd tonnes with a yield of 3.1 t/ha, which is 6% more than in 2022. Corn and sugar beet harvesting is 2/3 complete.
“Astarta also estimated its share in Ukraine’s exports of grains and oilseeds at 1% based on the results of 9M2023.
“Astarta is a vertically integrated agro-industrial holding company operating in eight regions of Ukraine. It comprises six sugar factories, agricultural enterprises with a land bank of 220 thousand hectares and dairy farms with 22 thousand cattle, an oil extraction plant in Globyno (Poltava region), seven elevators and a biogas complex.
In the third quarter of 2023, the agricultural holding earned EUR1.24 million in net profit, down 27.7 times compared to the same period in 2022. Astarta’s revenue decreased by 14.4% to EUR104.75 million, gross profit by 2.7 times to EUR26.96 million, operating profit by 7.6 times to EUR6.79 million, and EBITDA by 42.7% to EUR97.25 million.
Due to significantly better performance in the first half of this year compared to the first half of last year, in the first 9 months of 2023, net profit decreased by 9.8% to EUR 55.97 million, while revenue increased by 14.8% to EUR 392.00 million. The company’s gross profit increased by 3.0% to EUR 151.91 million, while operating profit decreased by 15.9% to EUR 79.91 million and EBITDA by 10.8% to EUR 116.63 million.
