Ukraine Grain Firm to Invest $500 Mln in Terminals, Silos

Ukraine's state-run GPZKU grain firm may spend around $500 million of a $1.5 billion Chinese loan on building a new grain terminal and on upgrading existing facilities, the company said on Monday.

 

According to a loan-for-grains deal signed in 2012, GPZKU is meant to supply 5 million tonnes of grain to Chinese trading firm CCEC each year. Last year it supplied 1.2 million tonnes of maize to China.

 

GPZKU said in a statement it hoped to invest $135 million in the new terminal with storage capacity of 300,000 tonnes that would be able to load ships with deadweight of 100,000 tonnes.

 

The company also plans to modernise its large terminal in the Black Sea port of Odessa, construct its own logistics centre and upgrade a series of inland silos. The projects should be completed in 2017-2020, it said.

 

GPZKU, the leading Ukrainian grain exporter in the first half of 2016, exported a total of 3.07 million tonnes of grain in the 2015/16 season.