Flour production in Ukraine dropped to its lowest level

Flour production in Ukraine in July-May 2019/20 made up 1.423 mln t compared to 1.553 mln t in the corresponding period of 2018/19 and 1.756 mln t in 11M 2017/18, the APK-Inform reports.

May production volumes dropped to record-low 100 thou. t.

"With the quarantine introduction, the market revived, especially in the small-packing segment. Never before had packaging machines worked as hard as they did in March and April. All existing capacities were loaded. And the demand in general increased sharply. The retail chains reduced the delay in payment from 60-90 to 3-5 days," stated Sergey Sakirkin, Chairman of the Audit Commission of the Union Millers of Ukraine.

Learn more: Flour production 2019: Ukraine's market leaders

According to him, the stir subsided, the population made stocks, the market stalled and is still in a barely active state.

"The production decline is marked annually. In May, only 100 thou. t of flour was produced. Ukrainian enterprises have never produced that low volume. With this trend continued, the monthly flour output will fall below this indicator," the expert notes.

As of June 26(MY2019/20: July-June), supplies of the product to the foreign markets increased by 34.2 thou. t or 11.4% YoY. Flour exports in the 2018/19 season reached 301.4 thou. t vs. 413 thou. t in 2017/18.