Astarta Agroholding, Ukraine’s largest sugar producer, supplied more than 1 million tons of products to global markets in 2023 and received EUR325 million in export revenue, up 17% compared to 2022, the agroholding’s press service reported on Facebook.
“The year 2023 was characterized by a number of next logistical hurdles: the termination of the grain agreement; significant limitation of export opportunities across land borders with the EU; regular Russian air attacks on Ukraine’s energy, railway and port infrastructure. On the other hand, these challenges mobilized our team to look for new opportunities. Diversifying logistics flows, we used combined types of transportation – the lion’s share of our products was exported through the sea corridor from the ports of Greater Odessa, guarded by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. We also delivered shiploads overland to Polish ports and through the Danube ports,” the press service quoted Astarta Commercial Director Vyacheslav Chuk as saying.
According to the information of the agricultural holding, the main consumers of corn from Astarta are China, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, wheat – Spain, Indonesia, Portugal, Sri Lanka. Astarta’s sugar, soybean oil and meal were supplied mainly to European markets. Astarta’s organic products were exported to Germany, France, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.
In general, the agricultural holding exported agricultural products to 44 countries.
Astarta said that it intends to continue working on diversification and expansion of sales markets, optimizing export logistics and increasing export volumes.
“Astarta is a vertically integrated agro-industrial holding operating in eight regions of Ukraine. It includes six sugar factories, agricultural farms with a land bank of 220 thousand hectares and dairy farms with 22 thousand cattle, an oil extraction plant in Globino (Poltava region), seven elevators and a biogas complex.
The agroholding earned EUR1.24 mln of net profit in the third quarter of 2023, which is 27.7 times less than in the same period of 2022. Astarta’s revenue decreased by 14.4% to EUR104.75m, gross profit decreased by 2.7 times to EUR26.96m, operating profit decreased by 7.6 times to EUR6.79m and EBITDA decreased by 42.7% to EUR97.25m.
Thanks to a stronger performance in the first half of this year compared to the first half of last year, for the first nine months of 2023 as a whole, net profit decreased by 9.8% to EUR55.97m on revenue growth of 14.8% to EUR392.00m. The company’s gross profit increased by 3.0% to EUR151.91m, while operating profit decreased by 15.9% to EUR79.91m and EBITDA decreased by 10.8% to EUR116.63m.
