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EBRD boosts Serbian agribusiness sector
€45 million to Victoria Group to purchase agricultural commodities
The EBRD is lending the Victoria Group, the largest Serbian private agribusiness company, €45 million to purchase agricultural commodities and to improve energy efficiency at its production facilities. This is the Bank’s first project within the agribusiness sector in Serbia to contain a specific energy efficiency component.
The €45 million loan, the largest so far given to a private company in Serbia, is being offered to two subsidiaries of Victoria Group: Victoria Oil and Sojaprotein. Victoria Oil is an edible oil company, which opened the first bio-diesel production facility in Serbia in July 2007. Sojaprotein is Serbia’s largest soy processing company and works with over 400 cooperatives and 40,000 farmers.
€40 million of the EBRD loan will be used to support Victoria Group’s key edible oil crushing subsidiaries by providing working capital to finance the purchase of agricultural commodities, such as sunflower seeds and soybeans. The remaining €5 million will be used for energy efficiency investments to reduce carbon emissions and improve energy savings identified following an independent audit arranged by the Bank. These will include installation of new biomass boilers at Sojaprotein’s production facilities.
Gilles Mettetal, EBRD Director for Agribusiness, said that this loan builds on a number of recent projects the Bank has financed in the Serbian agribusiness sector and is an important part of the Bank’s strategy to promote wider use of commodity-based lending in the region. This project will not only help the company grow in the edible oil sector, but will also highlight the benefits of energy savings investments to other local enterprises, Mr Mettetal said.
This is the EBRD’s second loan to Victoria Group. In July 2006 the EBRD extended a €10 million to Victoria Oil to increase oil production, which was one of the first loans in the country provided to a local company by using agricultural commodities as collateral.
The EBRD is the largest investor in Serbia, having committed more than €1.1 billion in 70 projects. In the agribusiness sector alone, the EBRD has committed €4.7 billion in 333 projects across central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States.
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