Astarta, Ukraine’s largest sugar producer, intends to continue investing in the construction of its soy protein concentrate plant in 2026. These investments will amount to approximately EUR40 million, said Vyacheslav Chuk, director of commercial operations and strategic marketing at the agricultural holding.
“Our budget process is not yet complete, but the agricultural holding will definitely invest in the completion of our new project to build a soy protein concentrate plant. This is about EUR40 million, and the rest is maintenance, which will vary depending on what we focus on,” he said at the Forbes Agro 2025 conference in Kyiv on Friday.
Responding to a follow-up question about how much Astarta will invest during the year to resolve current issues, Chuk said it could be tens of millions of dollars.
In 2024, Astarta began investing in the construction of a plant for processing soybean meal into soybean protein concentrate with a capacity of 500 tons/day (about 100,000 tons per year) in the Hlobyn industrial complex (Poltava region). The agricultural holding is investing more than EUR 76 million in the purchase of equipment and technologies and will create 110 new jobs.
Astarta and its structural unit Astarta Agro Protein signed the first investment agreement with the Ukrainian government to receive compensation from the state for significant investments. Under the agreement, the state will provide the agricultural holding with a number of incentives, including exemption from import duties on new equipment, import VAT on new equipment, and income tax for up to five years.
Astarta is a vertically integrated agro-industrial holding company operating in eight regions of Ukraine and is the largest sugar producer in Ukraine. It comprises six sugar factories, agricultural enterprises with a land bank of 220,000 hectares, dairy farms with 22,000 head of cattle, an oil extraction plant in Hlobine (Poltava region), seven elevators, and a biogas complex.
In the first nine months of 2024, Astarta increased its net profit by 35.1% compared to the same period in 2023, to EUR75.60 million. The agricultural holding’s revenue grew by 12.6% to EUR441.46 million, and EBITDA by 12.8% to $131.56 million.
