Astarta, Ukraine’s largest sugar producer, has already sown more than 60% of the planned sugar beet area and started sowing sunflower, the company’s press service reports on Facebook.
“The minimum moisture reserves in the soil due to the lack of precipitation in the autumn-winter period and rapid spring warming forced us to quickly adapt agricultural technologies to make the most of the favorable sowing windows,” the agricultural holding explained.
According to the report, Astarta has allocated the planned sown areas for strategic crops as follows: sugar beet – 34 thousand hectares, soybeans – 55 thousand hectares (including 3 thousand hectares for seeds), winter wheat – 46 thousand hectares (including 3 thousand hectares for seeds), sunflower – 28 thousand hectares, winter rapeseed – 13 thousand hectares, corn – 13 thousand hectares. The area under organic farming is 2 thou hectares. At the same time, the actual total structure of Astarta’s acreage will be clarified based on the results of the sowing campaign.
“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 2023, the agricultural holding reduced its net profit by 5.0% to EUR 61.9 million, and its EBITDA decreased by 6.1% to EUR 145.77 million, while revenue increased by 21.3% to EUR 618.93 million.
