OREANDA-NEWS. On 12 August 2009 was announced, that as of August 10, ASTARTA agri-companies in Poltava region completed the harvesting of early grains with about 150 thousand tons of grains collected on the area of 37 thousand hectares. The average yield of wheat is 4.8 tons per ha, 4.3 tons per ha for winter barley, 3.2 tons per ha for spring barley. The decline in the yield of wheat and spring barley compared to 2008 (10% in average) was caused by the less favorable weather conditions compared to the previous year.

At the same time, the average yield of early grains in Poltava region is about 3.3 tons per ha. ASTARTA's average yield exceeds these results by 25%. Among ASTARTA subsidiares, the highest results are achieved by LLC "named after Dovzhenko" (wheat - 5.3 tons per ha, barley - 3.3 tons per ha) and LLC "Poltavazernoproduct" (wheat - 4.6 tons per ha, barley - 3.5 tons per ha), the next is LLC "Dobrobut" (wheat - 4.4 tons per ha, barley - 2.8 tons per ha).

As for the same date of the previous year, ASTARTA's agri-companies in the Poltava region harvested about 85% of early grains. Harvesting in the current season gained a higher tempo after the Group's restructuring that helped to improve the performance and optimal use of production assets.

Comment of Viktor Ivanchyk, CEO of ASTARTA Holding N. V.:

"In general, we are satisfied with the harvesting campaign of early grains. The current season has been more demanding compared to the previous year, because of the both weather and business conditions. Despite these challengies, we have achieved quite high results of crop yield, reduced the timing of harvesting campaign and produced high-quality grain. Our agri-companies in the Poltava region, where we have operated for more than 10 years, managed to cut the cost of production and to maximize the production efficiency, as assigned.