KYIV. July 8 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Shuvar agricultural products market LLC (Lviv) early July sent first batches of Ukrainian currant to Poland.
“We were preparing for this event conscientiously: we looked for reliable suppliers of high quality products in Ukraine and potential buyers in Poland. The first batch of currant we exported this week was only several hundreds of kilograms, but this experiment was a success,” Shuvar Director Ihor Plotitsa said.
He said that demand on high-quality Ukrainian currant in Poland and the Baltic states is stable now, and at the end of this week the market intends to delivery several tonnes of currant to the EU market.
Shuvar asks Ukrainian producers who can provide for stable supplies of high-quality products to join the project. The market is holding talks on cooperation with new European buyers, among whom are not only wholesale sellers, but also processors.
In the previous years Ukraine almost did not export fresh berries to the EU, as there was no demand on it due to a lack of high-quality berries at competitive prices.
This year supply of currant, raspberry, hurtleberry and blueberry in Ukraine would grow thanks to an increase in domestic production. The prices of berries could be slightly lower than last year prices.
“In the previous season sweet cherry held the first position in volumes of exports in Ukraine and strawberry was second. We almost did not export other berries. However, the volumes of sweet cherry and strawberry were small and almost all berries were sent to Russia,” the expert of the fruit and vegetable market of Eastern Europe Tetiana Hetman said.
She said that this year due to Russia’s embargo and the absence of re-exports through Crimea, the EU market is the most promising alternative for exports supplies.
KYIV. July 7 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ukrprominvest-Agro, a vertically integrated agro-industrial company, plans to launch its first grain storage facility in the town of Haisyn in Vinnytsia region in September 2016 with the investment in the first phase of the project being UAH 120 million, the company said on its website.
The storage capacity of the first facility is 40,000 tonnes, the total storage capacity is projected at 68,000 tonnes.
The facility will be able to dry 50 tonnes of grain per hour, it said.
“The construction of a new silo will optimize costs on grain logistics, primarily corn logistics; will improve its quality and decrease storage losses,” it added.
Ukrprominvest-Agro’s core business includes growing crops, sugar, flour, meat, and dairy farming. The company’s land bank is 122,000 hectares, the total number of cattle is 5,200 head, that of pigs is 21,000. In 2015, Ukrprominvest-Agro produced 195,000 tonnes of sugar, allowing it to rank second in terms of sugar production in the country.
Ukrprominvest-Agro incorporates Agroprodinvest Group LLC, PrJSC Podillya, Zorya Podillya LLC, Bread Combine No. 2 LLC. The holding is owned by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
KYIV. July 7 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Investment of Nibulon into the launch of a river handling terminal near Voznesensk (Mykolaiv region) totaled UAH 450 million, the company’s press service has told Interfax-Ukraine.
“The cost of the high-tech terminal located on 12.5 ha was some UAH 450 million,” the company said.
The terminal can store 76,000 tonnes of grain, the daily capacity of dryers is 4,000 tonnes, and the daily loading capacity is 12,000 tonnes.
“We are not frightened with competition. We have a strategy designed. Ukraine has good prospects for harvest of 80-100 million tonnes of grain every year. Exports this year is planned at 39 million tonnes. The figures would grow to 60-70 million tonnes,” Nibulon Director General Oleksiy Vadatursky said.
He said that the company is ready to export 8 million tonnes of grain every year. Last agricultural year Nibulon exported 4.56 million tonnes of grain.
Vadatursky believes that the launch of the new terminal would help local farmers to have the more attractive price with the reduction of expenses on grain transportation.
In two weeks the company seeks to finish dredging works on the Pivdenny Buh River to start shipping grain from Voznesensk to Mykolaiv.
Nibulon was created in 1991. It is one of the largest operators in the grain market of the country. The company has elevators with a total capacity of more than 1.7 million tonnes, as well as own transshipment terminal in Mykolaiv.
KYIV. July 7 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The prime ministers of the member states of the GUAM Organization for Democracy and Economic Development will discuss the establishment of a free trade zone at a meeting in Kyiv in the fall, Dmytro Stoliarchuk, press secretary for Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, said on Twitter on Tuesday.
“The GUAM heads of government will discuss the introduction of a free trade zone in Kyiv in the fall,” Stoliarchuk said.
Groysman has met with a GUAM delegation, he said.
GUAM is a regional organization set up in 1997 by Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova.
KYIV. July 7 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ukraine and the United States are preparing the resumption of launches of Antares modernized launch vehicle from Wallops Flight Facility (Virginia, U.S.) that delivers cargos to the International Space Station (ISS) under the NASA order, Head of the State Space Agency of Ukraine (SSAU) Liubomyr Sabadosh has said.
“According to the information from our U.S. partners, the launch of the Cygnus cargo spacecraft using Antares launch vehicle scheduled for July 6, 2016 has been postponed for August due to technical reasons: partners are finishing the tuning of new RD-181 rocket engines successfully tested in June,” he said.
He recalled that Ukraine is one of the key participants of the Antares program: Pivdenne Design Bureau designed the first stage of the launch vehicle and Pivdenmash made it (both are based in Dnipro).
Early this year Pivdenmash and U.S. Orbital ATK signed a new contract to produce and supply six first stages of Antares launch vehicle for commercial missions of NASA with the option for six more stages. Pivdenmash said that at least two sections of first stages would be delivered in autumn under the contract. Since 2013, eight first stages have been shipped to the U.S. customer under the project, and three of them have not yet been used.
Ukraine and the United States have been cooperating under the Antares program since 2008. Orbital ATK designed the Antares launch vehicle under a contract with NASA worth $1.9 billion.
KYIV. July 7 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ukraine in the first half of 2016 fully used quotas for duty free exports of goods to the EU for the nine groups of agricultural products: honey, sugar, cereals and flour, malt and wheat gluten, processed tomatoes, grape and apple juices, oats, wheat, wheat flour and granules, corn, corn flour and granules.
The press service of the Ukrainian Agribusiness Club (UCAB) reported, referring to data from the European Commission, the main quarterly poultry and semi-finished products quota was fully used in the first and second quarter of 2016.
“The following groups are close to the full use of the quota: barley, barley flour and granules (31% used), glucose and glucose syrup (18.8%), off-corn (18.6%), barley (16.4%), starch (8.8%), processed food made of sugar (8.1%), ethanol (4.6%), processed food made of grain (1.9%), food (0.2%) and sweet corn (0.2%),” UCAB said.
Beef, pork, egg and albumin, butter and dairy paste, milk, cream, condensed milk, yoghurt and milk powder quotas were not used for the whole period when the trade part of the EU-Ukraine Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) Agreement is in effect.
The key reason is that Ukrainian producers do not have European quality certificates.
“Only 12 dairy companies in Ukraine passed certification and were permitted to export dairy products to the EU. The first pilot batch of dairy products was delivered to Bulgaria in late April,” the association said.
Restrictions in trade with Russia caused some logistics difficulties with exports to Russia and Central Asia, and the EU countries play an important role in foreign trade with Ukrainian agricultural products now.
