Vitagro Group of Companies has invested a total of about $50 million in the development of its projects since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the company’s development and investment director Serhiy Savchuk said at the conference “Doing Agribusiness in Ukraine” in Kiev on Wednesday.
According to him, the main investments were made in the construction of a plant for the production of microfertilizers and plant protection products (PPP) Vitagro Partner, biomethane and bioethanol plants, as well as in increasing the capacity of the oil extraction plant.
Savchuk specified that about $8 million was spent on the construction of the Vitagro Partner plant and more than $6 million on the construction of the biomethane plant. The biomethane plant was the first in the country to be connected to the gas transportation system of Ukraine, and it has been pumping biomethane for export for the third month already.
Investments in the bioethanol plant totaled $20 million, while the expansion of the oil extraction plant’s capacity cost less than $15 million.
“Projects that were planned and developed already during the war. Vitagro Group felt that even in the conditions of war it is possible to work and develop new projects, so, for example, at the state auction bought a distillery in Ternopil region and now it produces 25 thousand tons of biomethane per year. In parallel, the production of protein feed additive for animals (DDGS) is launched, the capacity of which will be 25 thousand tons per year”, – said the representative of the company.
VITAGRO group of companies was established in 1999. In 2021, it employed 5 thousand employees, its revenue amounted to $211.3 million, EBITDA – $101 million.
The group has a land bank of 85,000 hectares. The group also has a seed and crop protection products plant, as well as sunflower oil production facilities and one of the five largest orchards in Ukraine. VITAGRO also has 5,000 head of cattle and 110,000 head of pigs, elevator capacity for 400,000 tons, as well as three brick factories and nine asphalt plants, four solar power plants with a total capacity of 16 MW.
The first pilot biomethane project of VITAGRO was presented in June 2023 in Dobrogorshcha village in Khmelnytsky district of Khmelnytsky region, where a biomethane plant with a capacity of 2.9 million cubic meters per year was built on the basis of a farm and a biogas plant. The investment in the project is estimated at EUR7.6 million. The manure, silage and straw from the group’s farms with pigs and cattle will be used for methane production.
According to the information in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities and Individual Entrepreneurs, the main beneficiary of Vitagro is MP Serhiy Labaziuk, while its CEO is Petro Labaziuk.
Vitagro Group will raise EUR110 million in additional investments to develop its biomethane plant in Khmelnytsky region and increase its capacity by 5 million cubic meters by the time biomethane production starts, said Serhiy Savchuk, Vitagro Group’s Director of Development and Investments, at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Berlin on Wednesday.
“We understand that by 2030, 35 million cubic meters of biomethane will be consumed in the EU. That is why we have invested EUR6 million in our first biomethane plant in Ukraine. Yesterday I spoke with our customers in Europe who sell our product to the EU. I sent them a memorandum for additional investments in our biomethane plant,” he said.
According to Savchuk, it is an investment of EUR110 million, which will allow Vitagro to increase biomethane production by 5 million cubic meters per year.
Vitagro’s Director of Development and Investment also said that the group of companies has launched five projects at its own expense since the beginning of the full-scale war. Fertilizer production projects and a corn pellet ethanol plant have now been fully completed.
The VITAGRO group of companies was founded in 1999. In 2021, it employed 5 thousand people, its revenue amounted to $211.3 million, and EBITDA was $101 million.
The group’s land bank is 85 thousand hectares. The group also owns a seed and crop protection plant, as well as sunflower oil production facilities and one of the five largest orchards in Ukraine. VITAGRO also owns 5,000 heads of cattle and 110,000 heads of pigs, elevator capacity of 400,000 tons, as well as three brick factories and nine asphalt plants, and four solar power plants with a total capacity of 16 MW.
VITAGRO’s first pilot biomethane project was presented in June 2023 in Dobrohorscha village in Khmelnytskyi district of Khmelnytskyi region, where a biomethane plant with a capacity of 2.9 million cubic meters per year was built on the basis of a farm and a biogas plant, with investments in the project estimated at EUR 7.6 million. Manure, silage, and straw from the group’s pig and cattle farms will be used for methane production.
VITAGRO also planned to launch two more such plants: “Zorya in Rivne region for 3 million cubic meters and 52 thousand tons of fertilizers with an investment of EUR 7 million and in the former Volochysk district (now Khmelnytsky district) for 2.5 million cubic meters and 100 thousand tons of fertilizers with an investment of EUR 6.8 million.
According to the state register, the main beneficiary of VITAGRO is MP Serhiy Labaziuk, and the CEO is Petro Labaziuk.
