MHP drives up Ukraine poultry exports to EU

According to data released by the Ukraine customs office, exports increased from 31,000 tonnes (t) worth $58.9m in the first half of 2017, to 37,400t worth $78.2m in the second half of 2017 and 55,600t worth $130.1m the first half of 2018.

Most of the Ukraine poultry exported to the European Union (EU) is supplied by the country’s biggest poultry meat producer MHP.

The strategic goal of MHP is to double poultry exports from Ukraine from the current 260,000 tonnes (t) per year during the coming five years, Yuri Kosyuk has revealed recently in an interview to Financial Times. This would turn the company into European analogues of Brasil Foods or Tyson, he stressed.

The EU accounts for nearly 30% of the MHP’s poultry exports, Kosyuk estimated. In 2017 Ukraine exported 68,400t of poultry to the EU with 64,000t was supplied by MHP, the company said earlier in a statement on its website. 

In total, Ukraine exported 184,600t of poultry in the first seven month of 2018, 9% up as compared to the same period of the previous year, the Agricultural and Food Ministry of Ukraine said in a statement September 14. MHP exported 133,560t of poultry in the first half of the year, 9% more than in the same period of 2017, the company reported earlier.

Anastasia Sobotyuk, head of the investor relations at MHP, has not provided additional information on the company’s export goals to GlobalMeatNews by press time.

European assets​

MHP increased its poultry exports to the EU with the in-bone chicken breasts the company supplies to its processing facilities in the Netherlands and Slovakia.

Within the Free Trade Zone Agreement Ukraine poultry companies are free to export this product to the EU free of duty and in the unlimited quantities, unlikely boneless chicken breast on which the duty-free export is limited with the strict quotation system.

In 2017, Anastasia Sobotyuk revealed that the MHP’s plant in the Netherlands was operating at full designed processing capacities, whilst the facility in Slovakia was yet to reach the full occupancy.

During the past year MHP considered purchasing new poultry processing business in the EU, including Doux in France and Exdrob in Poland. However, none of those deals came to fruition.   

Meanwhile, MHP is looking to acquire Perutnina Ptuj Group​ – Slovenian-based vertically integrated poultry company. Perutnina Ptuj is comprised of 18 companies in seven European countries. It is the poultry market leader in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. Perutnina Ptuj made almost EUR132m in net sales revenue during the first half of 2018, which is almost 7% more than in the same period last year, the company said.