For the first time in 2025, an annual quota separate from grain has been granted for the supply of 30,000 tonnes of Ukrainian flour to the European Union, which opens up long-term planning opportunities for the domestic flour-milling business, director of the Union “Flour Mills of Ukraine” Rodion Rybchynskyy said.
“The top 10 export-oriented enterprises have already invested about EUR17m in modernisation and now understand that these investments will have a long-term perspective,” he said at the Doing Agribusiness in Ukraine conference in Kiev on Thursday.
He recalled that until 2022 flour was exported under a common quota with wheat. Usually flour millers did not have time to deliver their products to the EU, as the quota was first chosen by grain traders. Only after the opening of trade preferences in 2022 Ukrainian flour began to actively enter the EU market, and in 2023 flour exports to its countries amounted to 73,000 tonnes.
“These volumes became an argument in negotiations: if 73 thousand tonnes are successfully delivered to the EU, the issue of non-compliance of Ukrainian flour with European quality requirements is dropped,” Rybczynski said.
According to him, today Ukrainian flour is present on the markets of Germany, Czech Republic, Spain and Italy, which is a clear proof of the high quality of Ukrainian products.
Rybchynskyi noted that during 11 months of 2025 Ukraine supplied 26 thousand tonnes of these products to the EU, so by the end of the year domestic producers will be able to fully choose the quota. At the same time, the biggest problem for flour millers in 2026, if we assess about the prospects of the industry, will be the shortage of labour.
One of the most expected events of the industry next year, he called the European Congress of flour millers in France, during which the Ukrainian side will try to find arguments and establish contact, in particular, with the Romanian Association of Flour Producers, as well as try to lay the foundations for the revision of quotas in 2028. Rybchynskyy estimated that Ukraine is capable of supplying 300,000 tonnes of flour to the EU market.