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Belagraterminal, a Belarusian company owned by the international group Sodruzhestvo (Commonwealth) of Alexander and Natalia Lutsenko, is preparing to commission its second oil extraction plant in the city of Smarhon, in a major expansion that cements the site as one of the largest oilseed processing hubs in the region.
According to Office Life, the new facility has been designed to process up to 3,000 tons of oilseeds per day. Once operational, total throughput at the Smarhon complex will rise from the current 660,000 tons to 1.72 million tons of raw materials per year. The project is expected to create around 300 new jobs in the region.
The plant has been engineered to handle multiple oilseed varieties, including rapeseed, soybeans and flax, alongside sunflower seeds — the latter marking a first for Belarusian industrial processing at this scale.
Belagraterminal has already completed the construction of raw material preparation and extraction workshops at the site. Supporting infrastructure includes a dedicated boiler house with a capacity of 50 tons of steam per hour, fueled by sunflower husks generated on-site. The complex also features storage reservoirs for 42,400 tons of vegetable oils, a warehouse terminal with a total volume of 288,000 cubic meters, more than 12 kilometers of internal railway tracks, and an automobile terminal capable of receiving up to 380 trucks per day.
The bulk of the vegetable oil produced is earmarked for export. On the by-product side, Pavel Tverdovsky, head of Belagraterminal, said the new plant will be able to meet up to 50% of domestic Belarusian demand for sunflower meal. National annual consumption of sunflower meal is estimated at roughly 300,000 tons.
The Sodruzhestvo Group was founded in 1994 by Alexander and Natalia Lutsenko, originally as a feed additives trader in Belarus. It has since grown into one of the world's largest oilseed processing holdings, with production assets in Russia, Belarus, Brazil and Turkey. Following a 2024 business restructuring, the group's Russian and Belarusian operations were consolidated under Sodruzhestvo Rus, which reported revenue of 2.8 billion dollars and net profit of 30 million dollars for the 2024/25 financial year.
Source: Nasha Niva