Svarog West Group mulls larger land bank to provide its processing plant with own soybeans

KYIV. April 21 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Svarog West Group is mulling the possibility of expanding its land bank from 80,000 hectares to 100,000-120,000 hectares to enlarge areas sown with soybeans to fully provide its processing plant, the construction of which is due to begin in summer 2015.

"We're considering an increase [in the yield of soybeans] as an option through the expansion of the land bank to boost self-provision of own enterprise, but this is the next step after the construction of the facility," Chairman of Svarog West Group's Board Andriy Hordeichuk told reporters on Tuesday.

According to him, the new plant's processing capacity will be 300,000–400,000 tonnes per year, but the figure is still being discussed with equipment suppliers. Soybeans account for 50%, or 40,000 hectares sown by the corporation. Last year it harvested about 140,000 tonnes of soybeans.

However, Hordeichuk says that it's agronomically wrong to increase the share of areas sown with soybean crops.

"Forty thousand hectares is the maximum share in the 80,000-ha land bank," he said.

"If we speak about such volumes of processing [as 300,000-400,000 tonnes] – there should be 100,000-120,000 hectares, not more. Of them, half should be sown with soybeans, which is about 50,000-60,000 hectares, which with our current level of technology will provide the plant with 100% of our own raw materials," he said.

Svarog West Group has been working in Ukraine since 2003. The company's assets are located in Khmelnytsky, Chernivtsi and Zhytomyr regions. Svarog is engaged in agriculture, horticulture and dairy and beef cattle breeding. The company has large grain, fruit and vegetable storage facilities and its land bank is 80,000 hectares.