Heat generators of "Greko Group" make it possible to reduce the cost of removing a ton-percentage
The cost of producing one tonne-per-cent when using alternative fuel ranges from 2.88 to 8 UAH.
Ivan Korzhenko, director of Greko Group LLC, spoke about this in an interview with the magazine The Ukrainian Farmer.
He noted that many of Greco Group’s customers in western Ukraine use wood chips. However, the majority use sunflower pellets as well as grain by-products.
‘In the Vinnytsia region, there are customers who purchase pellets in good time, and for them the cost per percentage point of moisture removal comes to 2.88 UAH. However, there are companies where the cost per percentage point of moisture removal reaches 8 UAH, which is too high for our technology. But this can happen if the same maize is dried not to 14–14.5%, but to 12.6–13%. What’s more, they try to remove all the moisture in a single pass,” noted Ivan Korzhenko.
According to him, in addition to a significant deterioration in the drying process, productivity is also severely affected. It should therefore be borne in mind that under such conditions, productivity declines non-linearly, and each subsequent percentage point of moisture takes longer to remove and requires greater energy consumption.
Ivan Korzhenko noted that Greco Group’s clients are intensifying competition in the market because they are able to lower the prices of their own services.
“A few years ago, all grain elevators in the Vinnytsia region were charging 55–60 UAH per tonne-percent of moisture content, and competition was fierce. After installing a heat generator, our client set a price of 36 UAH per tonne-percent and increased both the number of potential customers and his profits,” he added.
He is convinced that if the difference in drying costs amounts to 40 hryvnias per tonne, farmers will most likely try to take their grain to a grain elevator with cheaper drying facilities, even if it means storing the grain in a damp state for a short while.
As a reminder, retrofitting dryers can save between 1 and 4 UAH per tonne-per-cent. We have also reported that Greco Group heat generators running on alternative fuel leave no harmful residues.
