According to APK-Inform agency, NIBULON has been ranked first in the overall rating of Ukrainian exporters for several consecutive years, with 9% of the total market share in the 2018/19 MY. The company achieved a 9,3% share of the total grain group exports (wheat, barley, corn, sorghum, rye) and 6,1% of the oil group exports (soybean, rapeseed, and sunflower seeds).
In 2018/19 MY, NIBULON exported corn (2.23 million tons), wheat (2.13 million tons), and barley (535 thousand tons).
From a geographic perspective, China, with a 19 % share of exports, is once again the largest consumer, as in the previous year. The company exported agricultural commodities during the last marketing year to 19 countries, 9 of which were the EU countries: the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain.
“Over the past years, there has been a tendency to increase early grain crop exports to the EU countries”, mentions Deputy General Director on Trade Volodymyr Slavinskyy. “In particular, the company’s shipment volumes to the EU countries have increased by 12,8 % over the previous MY, representing 24,3 % of NIBULON’s total exports.  This is testimony that, due to high-quality of products supplied as well as its compliance with all required food safety standards, Nibulon managed to strengthen its position on the markets in the Northern Europe during 2018/19 MY. During the marketing year, the company exported products to Finland, Denmark, and Norway for the first time and developed strong relations with the regional consumers. NIBULON’s supplies to EU countries increase each year as a share in the company’s total exports”.
NIBULON plans to increase exports to 6 million tons, to deepen cooperation with existing contractors and to establish a dialogue with the new ones during the next marketing year.
According to Oleksandr Voloshyn, the company’s trader for barley and sorghum, one of NIBULON’s main advantages is its well-developed network of facilities to receive, store and ship grain and oilseeds, as well as its well-organized logistics (in particular, by water). This enables the company to offer buyers timely shipment of products even when the less-developed logistics of other exporters cannot meet shipment terms. In addition, due to its infrastructure, the company has an opportunity to control the product quality from the time when it is delivered to one of NIBULON’s facilities till the moment it is loaded into a hold. These advantages are highly appreciated by the buyers in the grain market. This has also allowed NIBULON to achieve record exports during the last marketing year.
Presently, NIBULON continues developing its network of river transshipment terminals and constructing its cargo fleet. This enables the company to increase its cargo turnover considerably. In 2019/20 MY, the company continues its expansion by building a new high-tech transshipment terminal in Vilniansk district (Zaporizhzhia region). The high-capacity NIBULON MAX floating crane to be put into operation on September 20, 2019 will allow the company to increase the annual cargo transshipment by 2-3 million tons per year and to increase cargo transshipment by NIBULON’s fleet up to 4-5 million tons per year; the company’s export capacity will be increased to 8 million tons per year.
“The grain market trends traditionally depend on yield and global consumption. The political factor considerably influenced markets last marketing year. The trade war between the USA and China, which is still ongoing, put constant pressure on the corn and soybean markets. Taking account of the specificity of political issue solution, it is possible to say that the main grain markets have become highly predictable, and price trends are based not only on fundamental factors and global balance of demand and supply. Taking into consideration the constant growth of Ukrainian grain exports over the past years, almost any market where there is demand is a prospective buyer of Ukrainian product. Thus, domestic agrarians and exporters will have to work hard in order to sell agricultural commodity surpluses on the foreign market under conditions of limited demand and intense price competition”, adds Oleksandr Voloshyn.
Ukrainian grain crops are traditionally supplied to the EU countries, Northern Africa and Middle East (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia). Recently, Ukrainian commodities have been successfully exported to the Southern and Eastern Asia (Indonesia, Bangladesh, and China). Natural disasters or political changes in one or another country can often change the situation and affect trade flows on the foreign market. Consequently, a prospective market can appear at any time. Due to the technical, transport and marketing flexibility of NIBULON, we are always ready to accept new challenges and to react efficiently to any market changes.