Agri-giant Kernel buys terminal in Pivdennyi port to use in grain corridor
Andrii Verevskyi, founder and largest shareholder of Kernel agricultural holding (Photo:landlord.ua)
Kernel Agricultural Holding has acquired the OilExportTerminal in Pivdennyi port, the company announced in a Facebook post on Jan. 25.
Kernel CEO Yevhen Osypov called the new asset strategically important for the company, given the lack of oil transshipment at Mykolaiv terminals. In the 2019-2022 marketing years, Mykolaiv accounted for about half of the total oil transshipment volume in Ukraine.
"Mykolaiv is of historic importance in this regard," Osypov said.
“Due to the full-scale war, the (Mykolaiv) port and terminals are shut down and are still outside the grain corridor. So we are compensating for the temporary losses thanks to the OilExportTerminal in Pivdennyi.”
The total capacity of the terminal is 49,400 tons of one-time storage of the main types of vegetable oils. It can accept and store sunflower, soybean, and rapeseed oil separately.
According to the Interfax-Ukraine news agency, the terminal was purchased for $19.8 million at the end of 2022.
In the first half of FY2023 (July–December 2022), Kernel sold 546,800 tons of sunflower and rapeseed oil (-14% year-on-year) and processed 1.11 million tons of oilseeds (-24%).
Prior to the war, Kernel was the world's largest producer of sunflower oil (about 7% of global production) and its biggest exporter (about 12%), as well as being the largest producer and seller of bottled sunflower oil in Ukraine.
Kernel's largest co-owner through Namsen Ltd. is Ukrainian businessman Andriy Verevskyi, who has a 39.3% stake.
In FY2022 (July 2021–June 2022), the holding made a net loss of $41 million, compared to $506 million in net profit in the previous fiscal year, its revenue decreased by 5% to $5.33 billion, and EBITDA decreased by 3.7 times to $220 million.
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