Thursday 28 February 2019

This weeks Black Sea agri-business news

Corteva Agriscience, the recently unveiled agriculture division of 2015 DowDuPont merger, announced the results of the all Ukrainian corn and sunflower yield contest.

The highest yield of a Pioneer sunflower hybrid was a farm in Kharkiv, with a variety yielding 5.30MT/HA, while the Pioneer corn hybrid winner was in Cherkasy, with a whopping 19.17MT/HA.

Ukraine's largest producer and exporter of sunflower oil, Kernel, announced that through the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), they have attracted project financing of $56M to upgrade existing oilseed processing plants in Poltava, Odessa, Mykolaiv and Kharkiv with biomass co-generation power plants.

Ukraine’s leading poultry producer, MHP, has purchased 90% stake in the integrated Slovenian poultry firm Perutnina Ptuj.

Ukraine’s ministry of agriculture has revised their 2018/19 grain export forecast to 49MMT from 47.2MMT; as of February 20, exports stood at 31.31MMT, 21.5% more than on the same date of the previous year.

Russian Agriculture Bank said it will provide an 18.9 billion rouble ($288 million) loan to Ekoniva, a leading agricultural holding with 500,000 ha, for the construction of a dairy plant that will allow them to reach a full capacity of processing 1,150MT of milk per day by 2022. 

The USDA estimate Kazakhstan wheat production in MY18/19 at 13.98MMT, down 0.8MMT on the previous year, citing unusually cold spring delaying planting, insufficient rains during vegetation and excessive rains during harvest.  

It’s a wonder they harvested anything by the sounds of that report.

They also see Kazakhstan’s 18/19 barley production at a record 3.97MMT and another record harvest in 19/20 at 4MMT.

We would like to make an early summer Crop Tour of Kazakhstan to assess the condition of wheat and barley and make yield forecasts from the field but we require help funding it, drop me a line if you'd be interested in sponsoring a KZ tour.

The first train of 2,200MT of wheat arrived at Urumqi in northwest China from Kazakhstan. The company said they normally use trucks to import wheat from Kazakhstan but transportation by train can save some 20 days.

Urumqi is the most remote city from any sea in the world.