Astarta Holding

ASTARTA Holding (ASTARTA-KYIV, ASTARTA HOLDING PLC) is a vertically integrated agro-industrial holding company in Ukraine, a public European company. It produces food products with a focus on global markets.

The company was founded in March 1993 by Viktor Ivanchyk, who has been CEO since then.

The company's main activities are crop production, sugar production, dairy and meat farming, soybean processing, grain logistics, and bioenergy.

Since 2006, the company's shares have been listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (ticker: AST).

Astarta's majority shareholders are Viktor Ivanchyk and Fairfax Financial Holdings LTD. Other shareholders include institutional European and American investors.

In 2008, the company was one of the first in Ukraine to join the UN Global Compact network.

Activities
Main activities:

Crop production. The company manages about 220 thousand hectares of agricultural land in seven regions. Key crops: sugar beet, soybeans, rapeseed, wheat, corn, sunflower. Annual production volumes: up to two million tonnes of sugar beet and one million tonnes of grains and oilseeds. The company processes part of its oilseeds at its processing plant in Ukraine and sells the rest.

Astarta operates a network of silo complexes with a total simultaneous storage capacity of over 560 thousand tonnes.

Sugar production. The company's sugar refineries are located in the Poltava, Vinnytsia and Khmelnytsky regions. The company's annual sugar production in recent years has been 250-500 thousand tonnes. The company's plants can also produce sugar from raw cane sugar. The products are sold in the domestic and European markets.

Soybean processing. Soybeans are processed at the company's Globinsky processing plant, with an annual production capacity of 230 thousand tonnes. The products are sold domestically and exported to the EU, the Middle East and the Far East.

Dairy and meat farming. Astarta is the largest producer of industrial milk in Ukraine. Annual production is over 100 thousand tonnes of milk and 2600 tonnes of meat. The total herd of cattle is almost 30 thousand heads.

Alternative energy. The holding owns a bioenergy complex with a capacity of over 50 million m3 of biogas per year. Biogas is produced from organic residues of sugar beet processing.

Astarta actively cooperates with the world's leading financial institutions: the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the European Investment Bank, the Dutch Development Bank FMO, and the German Development Bank DEG.

Timeline
1993 - Astarta-Kyiv was founded on March 2, Kyiv, Ukraine.

1994 - April, the company signed a landmark first contract for supplying energy to Ukrainian sugar factories in exchange for sugar.

1997 - The first agricultural subsidiary was established in the Poltava region, Ukraine, and the company started to engage in agricultural production.

1999 - Astarta became a shareholder in the first sugar plant in Ukraine and started producing sugar.

2003-2005 - the company acquired four more sugar plants in Ukraine.

2006 - on May 24, the holding company Astarta Holding N.V. was established under the laws of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

On 17 August, Astarta Holding N.V. made its initial public offering on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. The funds raised through the IPO were invested in developing sugar production, improving agricultural technologies and modernising livestock farming.

2008 - Astarta started operations in the Khmelnytskyi region, Ukraine, by acquiring one more sugar plant.

2010 - the company launches a large-scale investment programme to build grain silo infrastructure, a new business. The first two grain silos were constructed and put into operation.

2011-2012 - the company built a new dairy complex for 1300 head of cattle and opened a newly constructed heifer complex for 5000 head of young stock in the Poltava region, Ukraine.

2014 - A processing plant was put into operation in the Poltava region, Ukraine (soybean processing into high-protein meal and soybean oil).

2017 - Astarta established an in-house IT company AgriChain, which started developing a unified digital agribusiness management system in 2018.

2018 - 2019 - the company continues its large-scale investment programme to create silo infrastructure, building and commissioning four more grain silos in the Poltava region, Ukraine. The company also purchased 200 new grain hoppers.

2020 - the company received a certificate of organic production.

2021 - Astarta paid its first dividend of EUR 0.5 per share.

2022 - In March, Astarta and the charity foundation "Believe in Yourself" created the Common Help Ukraine humanitarian platform to help the Ukrainian military and civilians affected by Russian aggression in Ukraine.

In October, the company's corporate headquarters were moved from Amsterdam (Netherlands) to Nicosia (Cyprus), and the company continued to list on the Warsaw Stock Exchange as Astarta Holding PLC.

2023 - Astarta marks its 30th anniversary on March 2.

Digital innovations
In 2017, Astarta set up an in-house IT company, AgriChain, which started developing a unified digital agribusiness management system in 2018. The AgriChain operating system automates various business processes of the company and allows online management of the land bank, agricultural production, crop monitoring, inventory and product logistics, warehousing and other business units. Since 2020, the product has been available to other agricultural companies.

In 2022, AgriChain started a partnership with Planet Labs, which integrated the AgriChainScout app and Planet Labs' platform for receiving satellite images of fields (Planet Visual, Planet NDVI). AgriChain also cooperates with the world's leading companies One Soil and Sentinel Hub.

The company was nominated for the global award, The 2nd Planet Purpose Awards 2023, in the Dream Big category.

Sustainable development
Astarta is actively working to implement sustainable development programmes in energy efficiency, environmental protection, social issues and corporate governance.

To accelerate the implementation of these programmes, the company has established a corporate governance system for sustainable development: an ESG Committee at the operational level and a Sustainability and CSR Committee at the Board of Directors level.

After joining the UN Global Compact network in 2008, Astarta started publishing non-financial reports, which have been prepared per GRI standards since 2017.

In 2008, Astarta was the first Ukrainian company to agree to sell carbon credits with the Multilateral Carbon Credit Fund established by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the European Investment Bank under the Kyoto Protocol.

Since 2018, a comprehensive analysis of Astarta's progress in sustainable development based on ESG criteria has been carried out by the international rating agency EcoVadis. Astarta has been awarded the EcoVadis silver medal for three consecutive years.

Since 2020, the independent rating agency Sustainalytics has assessed the company's ESG risks. As of September 2021, Astarta was ranked second among 89 agricultural companies in the world evaluated by the agency and 93rd among 561 food companies.

Since 2021, Astarta has been reporting climate change issues on the Carbon Disclosure Project platform.

In June 2022, during the UN Global Compact Leaders Summit in New York, Astarta's CEO Viktor Ivanchyk was announced the winner of the 2022 SDG Pioneer for Sustainable Business Strategy nomination for his achievements in promoting the Sustainable Development Goals. Ukraine was represented at this competition for the first time.

To achieve its sustainability goals, Astarta actively cooperates with leading international institutions. In June 2023, the company received a USD 30 million financing from the EBRD. The package also included a USD 9 million sustainability-related loan from the Clean Technology Fund. It is the first transaction in Ukraine to be supported by the EBRD's High Climate Impact Corporate Sector Programme, financed by the Clean Technology Fund. The loan has an innovative blended finance structure whereby pricing is linked to achieving climate targets.

Humanitarian and social initiatives
The company's social initiatives are focused on improving the well-being of the communities in which the company operates. Economic and social sustainability (SMART Impulse for Community project), fostering change leaders among young people (Lift project), developing education and reducing the gap between theory and practice (Dual Education project), and other projects.

Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Astarta has focused on food and humanitarian security and, together with the charity foundation "Believe in Yourself", created the Common Help Ukraine humanitarian platform.

Over 35 partners from twelve countries have joined the initiative in over a year and a half of operation. More than 831,000 Ukrainians have received assistance.

Overall, the platform's partners have focused on four main issues: humanitarian aid to temporarily displaced Ukrainians affected by the war, medical and social institutions in Ukraine, and support for the Ukrainian military.

A separate focus was on the development of regional entrepreneurship in cooperation with the German development bank DEG, Raiffeisen Bank and the Government of Canada - the partnership grant programmes "Course for Independence", "Courageous", and "Wings". Two hundred nine businesses received grants to develop an existing business or to start a new one and have already created more than 500 new jobs.

The fourth issue is reintegration and psychosocial support for veterans and military families, internally displaced persons, people with disabilities, and low-income and older people. To this end, Astarta and the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine signed a Memorandum of Cooperation to improve social services for vulnerable groups, support mental health, and increase local communities' cohesion and social capacity to overcome war challenges (the Integrated Resilience Service project).

Astarta's contribution to the Ukrainian Economy
In August 2021, E&Y presented the results of its research on a comprehensive assessment of Astarta's total contribution to the Ukrainian economy.

In August 2023, Astarta updated the data, noting that the company's contribution to the country's economy over the seventeen years of the company's public history exceeded USD 2.64 billion, including USD 513 million in taxes and fees.