France’s AgroGeneration Group with assets in Ukraine is mulling a possibility of expanding its land bank, plans to upgrade machinery in 2018, AgroGeneration Vice President Serhiy Bulavin has said.
“We are considering a possibility of increasing the land bank and are planning to update the equipment. Recovery of the equipment significantly influences the economic efficiency. With the planned updating of equipment, the agricultural company reduces the maintenance and repair costs, cuts the risks of non-fulfillment of production plans due to sudden breakdowns,” he told Interfax-Ukraine.
In addition, according to the vice president, in 2017 an independent audit of the group’s technologies was conducted and a number of improvements were made.
“We bought new equipment and updated old one for $6.5 million. Thanks to these changes and the price forecast for our products harvested in the 2017-2018 season, we decided to expand the area with winter crops by about 10% of the total land bank size to some 48,000 hectares. These areas are distributed among all our farms in Kharkiv, Sumy, Zhytomyr, Ternopil and Lviv regions. Winter wheat, rapeseed and barley are sowed on these areas,” Bulavin said.
He also said that the structure of fields with spring crops has also been revised depending on the price forecast.
The main task of the company for the near future, according to Bulavin, is to have as largest economic efficiency as possible.
“For this [ to have largest economic efficiency as possible] in 2017 we invested in the training of our specialists under the Lean Six Sigma program and the introduction of this technology in the company. Now we have about 50 projects related to obtaining additional efficiency. Most of them will be completed in 2018 and the new projects will be launched,” he said.
The French group AgroGeneration was founded in 2007. It grows grains and oilseeds. In Ukraine it currently processes about 120,000 hectares.
