The Continental Farmers Group completed the construction of the new potato storage facility with the total area of over 6 thousand m2 in the village of Chukva (Sambir District, Lviv Oblast).
Continental invested UAH 111.4 million in the construction of the new production facility. The construction works were implemented over a period of 10 months.
“Continental is one of the leading potato producers in Ukraine and we consider this field of operations as one of our strategic priorities. Each year, we grow potatoes on a land area of two thousand hectares and we also are improving the technologies and expanding our production facilities all the time. After putting the new facility in the village of Chukva into operation, our Company may store one-time over 100 thousand tons of potatoes and supply them to our buyers during virtually the entire year, ensuring consistently high quality of the potato,” Georg von Nolcken, Continental Farmers Group CEO, commented.
The potatoes storage facility has the capacity to store one-time 16 thousand tons of the harvested potatoes and is one of the largest potatoes storage facilities in Ukraine. The storage facility is aboveground and is split into six chambers, each one having the capacity to store 2650 tons of potatoes. Potatoes are stored in bulk and may be stored at the facility up to 10 months without any loss in quality.
The facility is equipped with innovative ventilation equipment of the Mooij Agro Dutch Company. This equipment allows precise control over the temperature, humidity, and the CO2 levels at the potato storage facility as well as individual parameters for the storage of any potato variety.
“The modern adjustable-speed ventilators and a precise computer system of humidification allow us to prevent the water loss in the harvested crops,” Orest Kravchuk, Head of Continental Potatoes Cluster noted. “Aside from that, we have installed a unique ventilation floor that is equipped with positive pressure systems that distribute the air evenly over the entire flat area of the floor. I would like to note that a combination of these technologies is used for the first time in Ukraine, and we rightfully may declare our new facility to be the most modern in the country.
The Continental Farmers Group considers the growing of potatoes to be one of Company’s priorities. Continental is a market leader in the Ukrainian potato market and uses its own growing technologies developed in-house. The Continental Farmers Group grows chips, seed and table varieties of the potato. The overall area used for growing potatoes in this production season is 1.8 thousand hectares. The Company uses modern storage facilities in the Ternopil and Lviv Oblasts that have the capacity of 103 thousand tons to store the harvested potatoes. The Company assets also include its own starch factory.
