Over the 10 years of operation of the agricultural division of Epicentr Agro, around $700 million has been invested in the business. This was stated by Svitlana Nikityuk, Head of Epicentr Agro, in an interview with LIGA.net, as reported by ProAgro Group.

“Approximately 45% of these funds were allocated to the development of elevator hubs, while 40% was invested in the acquisition of corporate rights and the formation of the land bank. The remaining 15% was used to purchase machinery, including combines, tractors, equipment, grain trucks, oil tankers, and more,” Nikityuk said.

Currently, Epicentr Agro’s grain storage capacity reaches up to 2 million tons of simultaneous storage, allowing the company to rank among the top five largest players in the Ukrainian market.

According to Nikityuk, the agricultural segment enables the company to diversify its business.

“If retail activity slows down in February–March, the agricultural division becomes more active during this period by selling and shipping wheat through its elevator hubs,” she explained.

Given the size of its land bank, investment volume, and capitalization, the value of Epicentr Agro now exceeds $1 billion. The company is planning to enter the European market, focusing on niche products with clear value propositions and established demand, rather than competing in oversupplied segments.

“It is obvious that Ukrainian agricultural companies are strong competitors for European producers, which is why we are not particularly welcomed there in our current form. We plan to develop processing and value-added production that will be attractive to the European market,” Nikityuk noted.

She added that the company is building a ‘field-to-table’ ecosystem, with the Podillia-Horodok industrial park in Khmelnytskyi region as a key element. The project includes the creation of a special economic zone for the production of oil and meal from rapeseed, soybeans, and sunflower, as well as corn processing into bioethanol and biogas.

“In the future, we plan to process all the grain we grow. We already operate two mills processing wheat. At the same time, the flour market in Ukraine is heavily influenced by state price regulation and remains unstable, making it difficult to achieve profitability. Therefore, we are looking for the next levels of processing with more stable margins,” she added.

Earlier it was reported that despite high average corn yields last year, Epicentr Agro’s financial results were constrained due to increased grain moisture, which significantly raised processing costs.

Source: Elevatorist.com