Next year KSG Agro will expand the crop rotation of winter and spring peas on a total area of 1,000-1,200 hectares, some 500-600 hectares will be allocated for each type of crop, the company’s press service said on Thursday.
“In 2022, we will expand the crop rotation with peas, which at one time were abandoned due to low prices and demand. Now this crop is interesting as an excellent predecessor of winter crops, primarily wheat, and as a protein product for our pig breeding,” the group of companies said, citing its production director Dmytro Yemelchenko.
According to the agricultural holding, a seedling of winter pea of the Serbian Moroz grade has already been planted on an area of 53 hectares, and in March 2022 a seedling of spring peas will be sown. After receiving seeds for them, KSG Agro intends to sow marketable pea crops.
The company clarified that the expansion of the pea crop rotation is not so much commercial as technical in nature.
“Let’s say that we get a low profitability of 20-30%, but at the same time we understand that we will have an effective predecessor for winter crops, on which we will receive an increase,” Yemelchenko said in a report.
The vertically integrated holding KSG Agro is engaged in pig breeding, as well as in production, storage, processing and sale of grain and oilseeds. Its land bank is about 21,000 hectares in Dnipropetrovsk and Kherson regions.
According to the agricultural holding itself, it is one of the top five pork producers in Ukraine.
Thermal power producers have reduced their debt to NJSC Naftogaz Ukrainy by UAH 22.03 billion through mutual settlements in accordance with the law on measures aimed at settling the debt of heat supply and heat generating organizations and enterprises of centralized water supply and drainage.
This was reported in a company’s press release on Thursday.
“It was possible to carry out mutual settlements in an extremely short time thanks to effective cooperation between Naftogaz, the Ministry of Communities and Territories Development of Ukraine, the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine, the State Treasury Service, thermal producers and relevant state administrations,” the document says.
According to the company, “debt settlement and timely payments for consumed natural gas are critically important to ensure a stable passage of the heating season.”
BGV Trident Capital, founded by Illia Ponomarev and Hennadiy Butkevych (the co-owner of ATB), has invested $5 million in the robot manufacturing startup Deus Robots, created by Pavlo Pikulin in 2018.
According to a release of Deus Robots, the attracted investments will be used to organize the serial production of robots for warehouse logistics, as well as to expand the number of developers in Ukraine and the company’s entry into international markets.
It is planned that by the end of 2022 serial production will begin with a volume of about 400 robots per month. These robots will be used to automate logistics processes.
Until now, as noted, Deus Robots has developed with the personal investment of its founders. Thus, Pavlo Pikulin has already invested over $1 million of his own funds in the development of the project. In 2021, Deus Robots produced and delivered 40 robots to customers.
“In any warehouse there are a number of tasks that are solved by people: sorting, order picking and transportation of goods. We develop robotic solutions for these tasks. At the moment we have three robots: for sorting goods and parcels, for transporting racks and for pallet transportation. Next year there will be three new models of robots that will solve other problems, for example, they will be able to pick up goods from shelves and racks,” Pikulin is quoted as saying.
According to him, the robotics market is a promising area for investment. Deus Robots already has orders for the supply of 400+ robots in 2022-2023.
“One of our robots can work approximately 18 hours a day. This exceeds the working day of a loader or warehouse manager, whose working day lasts eight hours. And add weekends, vacations, hospital and other administrative costs associated with hiring people (training, transportation costs and others),” he explained.
The release also notes that the development of robotics in Ukraine is facilitated by partnership with Poshta. DEUS Robots units are already being tested in the supply chain in the processes of sorting and moving goods of Nova Poshta.
Deus Robots, a robotic company engaged in the development, production and sale of high-tech logistics equipment, was founded in Kyiv in 2018. It specializes in the development and production of technologies for autonomous mobile robots (AMR).
The chairman of the board of directors of IMC agricultural holding, Oleksandr Petrov, for the period on December 27-30 bought 99,742 shares of the company at a price of PLN32.28 per share for a total of PLN3.22 million ($793,020 at the rate of the National Bank of Poland), thereby increasing his share in the charter capital of the agricultural holding to 81.21%, according to the website of the Warsaw Stock Exchange.
According to the group of companies, Petrov personally, as well as through his companies Richmarket Investments Ltd and Agrovalley Limited, owns shares in IMC in the amount of 26,945,415.
The IMC share price did not change over the week, remaining at the level of PLN32.3, and since the beginning of the year it has increased 1.7 times.
As reported, in 2020, the agricultural holding increased its net profit 4.3 times compared to 2019 – to $31.71 million, EBITDA – 1.8 times, to $71.84 million, revenue decreased by 5% – to $161.39 million.
IMC in 2020 sold 610,930 tonnes of corn (less by 14% compared to 2019), wheat – 118,060 tonnes (more by 54%), sunflower – 86,830 tonnes (more by 7.1%), soybeans – 1,310 tonnes (reduction by 25 times).
In May 2021, the company decided to pay 3.4 times more dividends for 2020 than in 2019 – EUR20.57 million, or EUR0.62 per share.
The agricultural holding specializes in the cultivation of grains, oilseeds and milk production in Ukraine. It processes about 123,300 hectares of land in Poltava, Chernihiv and Sumy regions. It owns capacities for storing 554,000 tonnes of grain and oilseeds.
The Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMCU) may permit Gorky Agrofirm (Kyiv), part of the agricultural holding Ristone Holdings, to purchase Kosari distillery (the village of Kosari and the town of Smila, Cherkasy region), the right to which the company won at a privatization auction in November for UAH 162.88 million.
The state regulator considered the relevant issue at a meeting on December 30.
According to the website of the State Property Fund of Ukraine (SPF), the privatized asset consists of 1,360 names of buildings, structures, movable and other property, including an industrial building, a fermentation department, a granary and a distillery, a company store, a pig farm, warehouses, hangars, etc. The facility is equipped with basic technological equipment, as well as the necessary communications.
The enterprise is located on nine land plots with a total area of 75.74 hectares the village of Kosari and the town of Smila.
Ristone Holdings is an agricultural vertically integrated holding.
Ristone Holdings cultivates 65,800 hectares on the territory of Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv and Zaporizhia regions. It is engaged in the cultivation of grain and industrial crops, animal husbandry, production and wholesale and retail trade in agricultural products, in particular, flour, bread, bakery products, etc.
Privatization of the alcohol industry involves the sale by the State Property Fund of 41 distilleries of the state-owned enterprise Ukrspyrt and another 37 factories united in the Ukrspyrt concern. In total, it is expected to attract about UAH 2 billion. At the same time, in 2020, the amount of assets sold at 20 auctions amounted to UAH 1.26 billion.
National bank of Ukraine’s official rates as of 31/12/21
Source: National Bank of Ukraine
