ADM Ukraine oilseed venture
50/50 shareholders in Illitchvskiy Maslo Extractionniy Zavod, a
joint stock Ukraine company specialising in oilseed crushing.
The venture will operate an oilseed crushing plant in the port of Illitchivsk, Odessa region in Ukraine. The plant is strategically located adjacent to the Risoil Vegoil Tank Export facility, which is currently owned and operated by Risoil. Construction began in April of 2003 and the company says that the plant is due to be operational in November of this year.
"This joint venture is a natural extension of existing Ukrainian operations for ADM," said Paul Mulhollem, CEO of ADM. "Through our majority ownership of Alfred C. Toepfer International, we operate an active and growing network of grain and oilseed origination facilities as well as investments in export elevators and transportation assets within the Ukraine."
Risoil is an important player in the Ukraine sunflower crushing industry and currently operates the regions largest sunoil export facility in Illitchivsk.
ADM, which is currently one of the world's leading processors of soybeans, corn, wheat and cocoa, has built up an extensive footprint in the important Ukraine market in recent years. Ukraine has proved an increasingly important market for the international oilseed crushing sector and only last month rival Bunge announced that it was setting up a 50/50 joint oilseed crushing venture with Estron in Illitchivisk.
Both ADM and Bunge have expressed their desire to press for a greater oilseed crushing capacity in markets where high growth opportunities exist.
Ukraine is currently one of the world's biggest producers of sunflower seed crops. In 2003 it produced approximately 10 per cent of the world crop for the seed. Last year proved to be a bumper harvest, with a total of 4.2 million tons compared to 3.3 million in 2002.
