Businessman: Ukraine could be left without bread wheat

A significant increase in the volume of exports from Ukraine of bread wheat compared to fodder wheat is caused by a very high demand for it in the world market, and without coordinating the volumes of its supplies between market participants, it will lead to a shortage in the country of raw materials suitable for bread production.

This opinion was expressed by the director of Roma Commercial and Production Company LLC (Pervomaisky, Kharkiv region) Serhiy Tsymbalov at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine, commenting on the refusal of the heads of grain processing associations to sign a memorandum between market participants for 2021/22 marketing year (July-June) without a separate restriction on the export of milling wheat.

“We have flour production, bread production, and we are doing a little trading, we export fodder wheat. This year, as never before in the last five years, the spread between bread and fodder wheat was up to $15, while in the usual standard mode it was $2-3. This suggests that the global market demand for bread wheat is very high,” Tsymbalov said.

According to him, there is a high probability that Ukraine exports most of the milling wheat and will remain with fodder wheat stocks if the memorandum is signed in the current version with the maximum export of up to 25.3 million tonnes of wheat in 2021/22, without its quality restrictions.

Tsymbalov said that it is impossible to make a quality product from fodder wheat without adding certain additives, which will lead to an increase in the price of the final product.

Head of the Millers of Ukraine union Rodion Rybchynsky said at a press conference that in order to bring fodder wheat to conditions suitable for bread production at the mill stage, it is possible to add dry fiber and other additives-correctors to it, but this will increase the price of flour by Hr 1.50-2 per kilogram and will make changes in the chemical composition of bread, which will lead to a violation of the established standards.

The production capacities of the Roma commercial and production company allow producing up to 420 tonnes of flour per day.

The company is engaged in the production of bakery products. The potential capacity of the bakery is 100 tonnes of bakery products. The bakery’s products are supplied to Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, and Poltava regions. Roma has been operating in the Ukrainian market since August 1992.

According to the unified public register of legal entities and sole entrepreneurs, the company is owned in equal shares by Serhiy and Ivan Tsymbalov.

Kyiv Post

Tags: Ukraine, export, Flour production, milling wheat, bread wheat, bread production, world market