EUROPE – Ukraine through its grain firm, the State Food and Grain Corporation of Ukraine (SFGCU) shipped more than 1 million tonnes of grain to China in the MY 2017/18, more than double exported in the previous year, reports World Grain.
According to SFGCU, 90% of the grains shipped to China National Complete Engineering Corp. (CCEC) were accounted by maize exports.
The state grain firm in a statement reported it shipped more than 1.2 million tonnes of grains, corn accounting for 40% of total exports, wheat, at 37%, and barley at 18%, while soybean, rapeseed and pea exports doubled compared with totals in 2016-17.
Under a $1.5 billion Chinese loan-for-grains deal signed in 2012, GPZKU is meant to supply 5 million tonnes of grain to Chinese trading firm CCEC each year.
The corporation through its main partner CCEC exports grain to Austria, France, Portugal, the Netherlands, Italy, Egypt, Algeria, Bangladesh, and Tunisia.
It was formed by the government in 2010 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 some 2.5 million tonnes of grain cargo per year.
Boosting grain reserves
According to UkrAgroConsult, Ukraine has boosted grain reserves by 35.5%, to almost 92 million tonnes as of July 1.
Wheat stocks soared by 58.9%, those of maize grew by 13.7% to 33.1 million tonnes, according to the State Statistics Service of Ukraine.
Reserves of grain, leguminous and sunflower seeds at Ukraine’s agricultural, seed storage and processing enterprises totalled 91.7 million tonnes as of July 1, 2018.
Ukraine’s Agrarian Policy and Food Ministry retained its forecast for grain yield in the 2018-2019 marketing year at 60 million tonnes.
In 2017, Ukraine harvested 61.3 million tonnes of cereals and leguminous crops which was 7.3% down from 2016, according to the State Statistics Service.
