Ukraine's Odessa vegetable oil plant will build a new crushing facility to increase its capacity by about 2,000 tonnes of sunseed per day, sunoil producers said on Monday.
Ukraine's national vegetable oil producers' union Ukroliyaprom said in a statement the new facility, which would also process 1,500 tonnes of soyabeans daily, would be launched in 2007.
"It will be the biggest vegetable oil plant in Europe," Ukroliyaprom quoted Odessa oil plant head Vastly Kalashnik as saying. Investment in the project could reach $100 million, he said.
The Odessa unit increased vegetable oil output by 39.7 percent to 61,948 tonnes in 2003.
In the 2004/05 season the company plans to process about 220,000 tonnes of sunseed. Ukraine accounts for around 10 percent of the world's sunseed production.
The country's vegetable oil plants can process about four million tonnes of sunseed per season.
Ukraine harvested 4.2 million tonnes of sunseed in 2003 and produced about 1.4 million tonnes of sunoil.
This year the ex-Soviet state plans to harvest about 3.2 million tonnes of sunseed and the government has said the country's sunoil output might reach 1.3 million tonnes.