News
25.06.2011
HarvEast starts harvesting crops from 195,000 ha
HarvEast agricultural holding created by the SCM Group and Smart-holding has started harvesting crops from 195,000 hectares in 2011.
According to a company report issued on Thursday, the first harvest will be gathered in Crimean farms belonged to the holding, where 9,000 hectares of land was sowed with winter crops last year: 5,000 hectares of wheat and 3,800 hectares of barley.
In addition, in spring HarvEast sowed sunflower seeds on 1,700 hectares and fodder crops on 3,800 hectares in Crimea.
The report says that in autumn 2010 and spring 2011 the holding sowed crops on 195,000 hectares, including 71,000 hectares of wheat, 21,000 hectares of barley, 48,000 hectares of industrial crops and 41,000 hectares of fodder crops.
In spring over UAH 100 million was invested in fertilizers, which in kind exceeds the total figure registered in the past two years.
"This is a first harvest of the holding. At the end of the harvesting campaign we'll thoroughly analyze the yield for each region so to draw up an efficient sowing scheme and define the optimal amount and type of fertilizers for each region," reads the report, citing acting director general Dmytro Skorniakov.
Last year the average wheat yield of Illich Steel Mill's assets, on the basis of which HarvEast was created, came to 29.3 centners per hectare.
Ukraine's largest holding, SCM, and its partner in the mining and smelting business Smart-Holding in March 2011 created the HarvEast agricultural holding with a land bank of over 200,000 hectares on the basis of the agricultural assets of Mariupol-based Illich steel mill (Donetsk region). The shares of the partners are 75% and 25%, with SCM being a majority shareholder in the holding.
The transfer of assets to the holding is to finish in autumn 2011.
Source Interfax-Ukraine
