HarvEast agroholding hopes to build a seed plant with a capacity of 10 tonnes per hour by the end of 2017.

"This year we will build a new plant. The optimistic plans for the launch [of the plant] are July-August of 2017," HarvEast Director General Dmytro Skorniakov told reporters in Kyiv on Wednesday.

He said that the plant will post-processing of seeds of leguminous and grain crops.

Skorniakov said that 70% of investment into the plant is own funds of the holding.

Earlier the company had a seed plant, but it lost control over the enterprise due to hostilities in eastern Ukraine.

An Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reported that on April 5 HarvEast signed a cooperation agreement with Maisadour, the seed company.

HarvEast would provide 50 ha for hybrids, including 20 ha irrigated in Donetsk region.

Maisadour would provide parent sunflower lines for planting seeds to HarvEast. Then Maisadour will assign the number to the batch and process the seeds at own plant in Dnipropetrovsk region and then the seeds will be returned to HarvEast.

In 2017, the agroholding seeks to install irrigation systems on 400 ha and in coming five years to expand irrigated areas to 3,000 ha.

Skorniakov said that investment into one hectare is $1,500-2,500.

HarvEast is an agricultural holding. Its core business is crop production (cultivation of wheat, sunflower, barley, perennial grasses, corn) and dairy farming.

Its shareholders are System Capital Management and Smart-holding.