Poland to maintain Ukrainian grain imports ban but aid transit

transit of grains from Ukraine, but grain will not be able to enter Poland,” Telus was quoted as telling the country’s Independent Self-Governing Trade Union of Individual Farmers and the National Union of Farmers.

On 23 July, the European Commission said the bloc would wait for the outcome of the current harvest before deciding on an appeal made by five member states to extend a temporary import ban on Ukrainian agricultural products beyond 15 September, AgriCensus wrote. The temporary ban on Ukrainian imports of wheat, corn, rapeseed and sunflower into Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia was introduced in May until 15 September.

Poland's Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Robert Telus has told farmers in the country that grain imports from Ukraine would not be allowed to enter the country after 15 September, AgriCensus reported on 4 August.

“We will do everything to help Ukraine in the

Over the last four months, Poland had exported more than 4.5M tonnes of cereal, easing some fears about mounting stock levels built up from last year’s harvest, the report said.

Transit volumes of Ukrainian grain had also increased from 114,000 tonnes in February to 262,000 tonnes in June, said Telus, who proposed facilitating transport of Ukrainian and Polish grains to seaports in Lithuania and Latvia.

AFRICA: Italian oil and gas company Eni has announced it would be investing in farming projects in several African countries to increase its production of biofuel feedstocks by one-fifth by 2025, Reuters reported on 1 June.

“Our goal is to cover 20% of (our) biofuel production with feedstock coming from our agri-business by 2025,” Eni Energy Evolution CEO Giuseppe Ricci told Reuters

In February, Eni announced it was aiming to increase its biofuel production from its current level of 1.1M tonnes/year to more than 3M tonnes/year by 2025 and more than 5M tonnes by 2030.

Around 700,000 farmers were expected to be involved in Eni’s farming activities by 2026, under deals signed with Angola, Benin, Guinea Bissau, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Mozambique, Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Vietnam, Reuters wrote.

Feasibility studies are also being conducted in Italy and Kazakhstan.

BRAZIL: Construction work has begun on Grupo Potencial’s new soyabean crushing plant in Paraná state, Biofuels Digest wrote on 3 July. The first phase of the work would involve an investment of US$349M to expand production.

The crushing plant would be built at Grupo Potencial’s industrial complex in Lapa, next to the company’s biodiesel plant, which was the largest in Brazil and the third largest in the world, Biofuels Digest wrote.

With a soyabean processing capacity of around 1.15M tonnes/year from 2025, the new plant was due to be operational 18 months after the start of construction, and would include a rail terminal to connect the plant to the Port of Paranaguá.