TOEPFER WORKING CAPITAL REVOLVING FACILITY

Overview
Project Summary Document
Environmental and Social Documentation
Procurement
Complaints

Project ID 17789

Status Complete

Location

Ukraine

Business Sector

Food and Agribusiness

Notice Type

Private

Project timeline

Exploratory
Passed Concept Review
Passed Structure Review
Passed Final Review
Board Approved
Signed
Implementing
Completed

Project ID 17789

Status Complete

Location

Ukraine

Business Sector

Food and Agribusiness

Notice Type

Private

Environmental Category

Approval Date

29 May 2002

Disclosure date

05 Apr 2002

As per section 1.4.2 (iii) of the Directive on Access to Information: "For Projects approved by Bank management where the Board of Directors has delegated the approval authority, the PSD shall be disclosed at the start of the relevant no-objection notification period to a member country of the Bank in accordance with Article 13 (iii) of the Agreement Establishing the EBRD."

Project Description

Toepfer, a Hamburg-based group and one of the world's leading agricultural products trading companies, has asked the EBRD to finance the increased volume of its business in Ukraine. The revolving facility will be used by the borrower to originate (i.e., purchase directly from farmers), transport, store and then either export the agricultural commodities or process them on a tolling basis in Ukraine, with the finished goods sold locally or exported.

Transition Impact

The project will inject liquidity directly into the primary agricultural sectors of grain and sunflower-seeds, where Ukraine has a great natural advantage - having probably one of the best natural growing conditions in the world.

The farming sector in Ukraine is in an early stage of transition and the project will address two obstacles to transition of the sector, (i) the inefficiency of the primary markets for the origination of agricultural products, resulting in barter transactions, lack of transparency, high volatility and low prices for the farmers and (ii) the lack of trust in a reliable grain warehousing system.

The Project will help achieve the transition objectives as follows:

Expansion of competitive interactions and linkages to other sub-sectors, e.g. grain warehousing. Toepfer is strongly committed to the reform of the grain storage sector and to the introduction of the Warehouse Receipt legislation and practices. The visible participation of Toepfer will lead to an increase in transparency in the grain origination market, reducing the proportion of barter transactions and helping to get better prices for the primary-agriculture producers, the farmers.
Syndication of this substantial transaction to foreign commercial banks will enhance the visibility and attractiveness of Ukraine to other Western financiers.
Institutional dialogue: In parallel with this project, the Bank has initiated an institutional policy dialogue and signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ukrainian authorities regarding creation of the legal framework for this system and related infrastructure. The project will help prepare the ground for introduction of a viable warehouse receipts system in Ukraine.

The Client

Alfred C. Toepfer (Ukraine) Ltd., (the borrower) is a fully owned subsidiary of Alfred C. Toepfer (Rotterdam) B.V. (the sponsor), a member of Toepfer group that has been active in trading agricultural commodities in Ukraine since 1993. The harvest of 2001 showed the potential of Ukraine as a major grain producer. Ukraine is a key country in central and eastern Europe and the CIS for the Toepfer group, a leading agricultural-commodities trader with decades of experience.

EBRD Finance

A revolving credit-line of €90 million (or equivalent in other major currencies) in total. Around €40 million out of the total will be syndicated to commercial banks.

Project Cost

Around €130 million, inclusive of certain parallel loans from local banks and inter-company loans from the sponsor.

Environmental Impact

The project was screened C/0. By nature of its business, the Borrower will not be directly involved in any kind of processing activities, therefore, environmental issues associated with the project are not considered to be significant.

Technical Cooperation

None.

Company Contact

Transition impact

ETI Score:100

PSD last updated

01 Feb 2019

Business opportunities

For business opportunities or procurement, contact the client company.

For state-sector projects, visit EBRD Procurement: Tel: +44 20 7338 6794
Email: procurement@ebrd.com

General enquiries

EBRD project enquiries not related to procurement:
Tel: +44 20 7338 7168
Email: projectenquiries@ebrd.com

Public Information Policy (PIP)

The PIP sets out how the EBRD discloses information and consults with its stakeholders so as to promote better awareness and understanding of its strategies, policies and operations. Please visit the Public Information Policy page below to find out how to request a Public Sector Board Report.
Text of the PIP

Environmental and Social Documentation is not available for this project.

Selected procurement notices related to this project may be shown below. Further procurement opportunities related to this and other projects, if available, maybe be viewed in the EBRD Procurement Portal.

The EBRD's Environmental and Social Policy (ESP), Access to Information policy (AIP) and Project Accountability Policy (PAP) enable sound and sustainable development in its projects. The Independent Project Accountability Mechanism (IPAM) deals with complaints about environmental, social and disclosure matters related to the Bank’s investments.

No complaints about this project have been made so far.

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