The market of agricultural machinery in Ukraine in 2022 will decline due to the aggression of the Russian Federation by at least 50%, depending on the company, the fall can be 50-80%, according to a posting on the website of the Czech manufacturer of agricultural machinery Bednar on Tuesday.
“For some it may be 50%, for others 80% or more, it will depend on the strategy of each company and the current situation in the country. As a patriot of Ukraine, I would like to see those brands lost in Ukraine more who decided not to leave the Russian market, but it depends on the conscious position of our farmers, whether they will take this factor into account when choosing a unit or not,” the company quotes Mykhailo Krishko, director of the company’s representative office in Ukraine.
He recalled that at the end of April, Bednar decided to finally leave the Russian market as a sign of full support for the Ukrainian people in the face of Russian aggression, and from the first day of the war stopped accepting any orders from Russian and Belarusian dealers and stopped all investments in these markets.
At the same time, all equipment previously ordered by Russian companies was offered for sale to other markets, and several units have already been bought out by Ukrainian farmers.
According to Krishko, before the start of the war, Ukraine was actively fighting for leadership in the annual turnover rating of Bednar, the company expected to increase its share in the company’s turnover to 20% by the end of 2022. The head of the Ukrainian representative office expressed hope that after the Ukrainian victory in the war, the country would become the largest market for Bednar equipment, since most of its units are created to work in the conditions of large agricultural enterprises, which are relatively numerous in Ukraine.
Bednar manufactures agricultural equipment for tillage, seeding, mulching, fertilization and crop residue management. Its products are exported to 39 countries with different climatic and soil conditions.
The equipment manufacturer has been operating in the Russian Federation since 2010 and had representative offices in 10 regions of Central Russia. In 2020, about 75 units of equipment were delivered to the Russian Federation, in 2021 deliveries were increased to 150 units.
In order to prevent the disruption of the sowing campaign in Ukraine due to breakdowns of agricultural equipment, the German manufacturer of agricultural machinery Claas has established an automobile channel for the constant supply of spare parts to the country, the company said on its Facebook page on Tuesday.
The company made such a decision on the logistics of spare parts, since air transportation of components to Ukraine is now impossible due to the closed sky due to the war unleashed by Russia.
“Claas, despite the absence of air traffic in Ukraine during this period, has established systemic express deliveries of the necessary spare parts for agricultural machinery. Now a shuttle is running from the central warehouse of Claas spare parts in Hamm (Germany) to Ukraine, bringing urgent orders,” he wrote. manufacturer.
The machine-building company emphasized that due to the military invasion of the aggressor country of the Russian Federation in Ukraine, all logistics processes were disrupted, which led to the impossibility of meeting the agreed terms for the supply of spare parts, but the company is doing everything possible to support its customers in Ukraine.
As reported, in mid-March, Claas said it was shocked by the escalation of Russian military aggression in Ukraine, as a result of which it stopped production in the Russian Federation and evacuated all its Ukrainian employees to a safe place.
Claas manufactures self-propelled grain harvesters, self-propelled forage harvesters, tractors, trailers for harvesting green fodder, telescopic loaders, balers, self-loading trailers. The main production facilities are located in Germany and France.
According to its Russian branch, Claas in Russia owns a harvester plant in Krasnodar, which has been operating since 2003.
Its branch LLC “Claas Ukraine” (Kyiv) has been operating in Ukraine since 1992. During this time, he imported over 8 thousand units of self-propelled equipment. In Ukraine, the company operates through a network of representative offices located in all regions of the country.
OTP Leasing LLC, the largest player in the market, has already purchased agricultural equipment worth UAH 100 million since the beginning of the war and intends to increase purchases to UAH 1 billion this spring, Andriy Pavlushin, CEO of the leasing company, said.
“The vast majority of customers paid their monthly payments even in these terrible 50 days of war,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
Pavlushin added that the company also helped the Ukrainian army for UAH 58 million in cars, trucks and money, and continues to do so.
On April 6, the CEO announced that after a 41-day break, OTP-Leasing again began financing existing proven agricultural clients of medium and small businesses, “those clients who paid invoices for March on time.”
Pavlushin then indicated that he had bought tractors and seeders for UAH 70 million during the week.
OOO “OTP Leasing” is a part of the European financial group OTP Group. The company was founded in June 2008 as a subsidiary of OTP Bank. Currently, according to the CEO, the company has 2,000 customers and 170 employees.
The company’s revenue for 9 months of 2021 decreased by 44.2% – to UAH 99.71 million, while net profit almost doubled – by 95.7%, to UAH 463.3 million, and assets increased by 31.5% – up to UAH 15.11 billion, including long-term receivables – by 29.2%, up to UAH 14 billion.
On Tuesday, the government of Ukraine allocated an additional UAH 2.3 billion to the Affordable Loans 5-7-9 program, under which the Cabinet of Ministers compensates the interest rate, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said.
“We have also reformatted this program. Now every entrepreneur can get a loan at 0% in the amount of up to UAH 60 million. The state will pay the interest to the bank,” he said in his address on Tuesday evening.
Shmygal stressed that the restart and resumption of business is a necessary condition for the sustainability of the economy.
The prime minister also noted that the government is providing assistance to farmers, and the sowing campaign has already begun in all regions, except for Luhansk.
“We have provided them (agrarians) with concessional financing for UAH 3.5 billion. At today’s meeting of the government, they decided to simplify the registration of agricultural machinery as much as possible. We are doing this so that sowing work in the field does not stop anywhere,” Shmyhal said.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Ministry of Finance announced that within the framework of the program “Affordable loans 5-7-9” from February 21 to April 11, 1,391 loans were issued for a total of UAH 3.95 billion.
The processing of agricultural crops using unmanned aerial vehicles is the most promising direction in the Ukrainian agricultural machinery industry, the Astarta agricultural holding has begun experimental implementation of this type of aviation this year, CEO of AgriChain, which is part of Astarta, Natalia Bohacheva has said.
“Drones are the most promising direction in Ukraine today. We use the drone scouting. These are video inspections and panoramic images of fields at different heights, at different angles with satellite monitoring,” she told Interfax-Ukraine on the sidelines of the Ukraine CFO Forum in Kyiv held last week.
According to her, drones are most effective in assessing the state of crops and promptly responding to emerging risks. In addition, this aircraft technology allows pre-harvest drying of grain crops with greater efficiency than using wheeled vehicles. This is especially pronounced during desiccation of rapeseed, which can be significantly damaged by the bottom of the vehicles processing it.
Bohacheva said that pilot schemes for processing crops with drones were introduced at a number of enterprises of the agricultural holding this year, mainly for rapeseed.
“I myself was a huge skeptic of drone treatments, especially in terms of refueling and charging, but the case with desiccation confirmed their effectiveness,” the head of AgriChain said.
AgriChain is a product company that develops solutions for the AgTech market, founded in 2016 by the Astarta agricultural holding.
According to the unified public register of legal entities and sole proprietors, 99.8% of the charter capital of Agri Chain LLC belongs to Astarta CEO Viktor Ivanchyk through Astarta-Kyiv LLC.
Astarta is a vertically integrated agro-industrial holding operating in eight regions of Ukraine.
Astarta agricultural holding, the largest sugar producer in Ukraine, has launched the first phase of a five-year investment program to update agricultural machinery and introduce IT instruments for agricultural management of AgriChain company, which is part of the agricultural holding structure.
According to the statement on Astarta’s website, the investments in 2020 were aimed at purchasing 31 tractors (John Deere), 21 grain, row crops and beet seeders (John Deere, Horsch Maestro, Pöttinger Terrasem, Kinze, Monopil, Amity Technology).
In addition, as part of the investment program, two self-propelled sprayers (John Deere), four cultivators (Amity Technology), three seed harrows of Ukrainian production and ten sets of vacuum systems for the conversion of row seeders were purchased.
New John Deere tractors with a capacity of 345 hp equipped with accurate navigation and telemetry systems that will integrate with AgriChain Farm and AgriChain Scout modules.
“The data obtained in real time will provide an opportunity to receive information, form informed decisions and create accurate daily tasks to increase technological field operations,” Astarta reported.
The agricultural holding said that in a few weeks Astarta will begin the spring sowing campaign, preparations for which are ongoing. In particular, winter wheat fertilizing is being completed and soil is being prepared for sowing spring crops.
The company’s crop rotation in 2020 will not change, since traditionally the main spring crops are sugar beets (35,000 hectares), corn (65,000 hectares), soybean (28,000 hectares) and sunflower (41,000 hectares).
Astarta is a vertically integrated agro-industrial holding operating in eight regions of Ukraine. It consists of eight sugar factories, agricultural enterprises with a land bank of 243,000 hectares and dairy farms with 25,000 animals, seven elevators, a biogas complex and a soybean processing plant in Poltava region (Globino Processing Plant LLC).
After three years of profitable work in 2018, Astarta received a net loss of EUR 21.11 million. Its revenue decreased by 18.8%, to EUR 372.22 million, and EBITDA fell by 52.4%, to EUR 56.87 million in 2018.
The AgriChain Farm module is designed to operate and communicate across all production services. It combines all the stages and processes of the production chain: from planning to execution and reflection. The AgriChain Scout information system is currently at the final stages of testing. It combined monitoring of the state of crops, agrochemical field certificates, meteorological data, plant vegetation status (NDVI), systematic monitoring of crops and assessment of its condition, etc.
Other modules are under development and are simultaneously being tested as pilot projects at Astarta’s subsidiary agricultural companies.
