Public joint-stock company State Food-Grain Corporation plans to boost its annual export handling capacity to 6 million tonnes from 3.75 million tonnes and increase the loading and unloading of vessels at its ports to 425,000 tonnes a month (at present around 200,000 tonnes), the press service of the Agricultural Policy and Food Ministry of Ukraine has reported, referring to State Food-Grain Corporation Deputy Board Chairman Denys Polezha.

"The company is actively working on increasing its handling and storing. The plans for the current agricultural year include [increasing] storage volumes to 3.2 million tonnes," he said.

Since the early 2015/16 agri-year (July 2014-June 2015) around 1.085 million tonnes of grain has been stored at the corporation's branches, including 854,100 tonnes of grain and oilseeds stored in elevators and grain collecting stations, which is 35,000 tonnes more than a year ago. The corporation's port elevators accepted 230,900 tonnes of grain.

"The corporation's main investment plans are to reconstruct Odesa grain terminal and Mykolaiv port elevator and a network of branches, and build a deep water port elevator. It is planned to create a logistics division for grain transportation by road aimed at optimizing and cheapening of transport expenses," he said.

In August 2010, the government decided to create the State Food and Grain Corporation of Ukraine. The corporation has a chain of branches, comprised of grain storage facilities, flourmills, fodder factories and a cereals factory. The 53 subdivisions of the corporation can store a total of 3.75 million tonnes of grain, which includes the grain handling capacities of Odesa and Mykolaiv ports of around 2.5 million tonnes of grain cargo per year.

In late 2012, the State Food and Grain Corporation of Ukraine received the first tranche of $1.5 billion from the Export-Import Bank of China. The funds were to be allocated to carry out spot and forward purchases of four million tonnes of grain which would be shipped to China.

China National Machinery Industry Complete Engineering Corporation (CMCEC) is the operator under the contract, which was signed for a period of 15 years.

The corporation plans to export 3.5 million tonnes of grain by late 2015 under the Chinese contract.