A Russian missile fired into the Ukrainian port town of Pivdennyi on the Black Sea on 19 April hit a vegetable oil export plant of Wilmar International.
The Singapore-based agribusiness group said in a statement on Monday that it will take about six months to rebuild the oil tanks that went up in flames during last Friday’s attack.
Footage appearing on social media shows raging flames and plumes of thick black smoke rising from the facility after the missile struck.
As just a few of Wilmar’s oil tanks were destroyed in the attack, operations at the facility are expected to resume in just a few weeks, “as soon as the relevant clearances are obtained from the local authorities”, Wilmar said.
There were no human casualties from the incident, which will “not have a material impact” on the group’s financial results, the statement added.
The tank terminal damaged is owned by Delta Wimar Ukraine — Wilmar’s 80%-owned Ukrainian subsidiary.
Delta Wilmar has two processing facilities in the location, which is about 30 km east of Odesa: one for tropical oils and another for processing oil seeds, next to a complex for vegetable oils transshipment at Yuzhny port.
Vegetable oil is one of the commodities shipped through Ukraine’s maritime corridor out of the war-torn country’s three big Odesa ports on the Black Sea.
According to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Wilmar’s facility was just one of two food export terminals hit by the Russian attack on Friday.
“This attack was already the 39th Russian strike on the Odesa region’s port infrastructure,” Zelenskyy said on X, adding that 215 such targets have been damaged or destroyed.
Wilmar is also a shipowner, with a fleet of liquid and dry bulk carriers to help support its agribusiness operations.
