Kernel, one of Ukraine’s largest agricultural holdings, has signed an agreement to acquire 100% of Enselco Holding Limited, an agricultural group with a 190,000-hectare land bank, a grain elevator network, and its own grain truck fleet. The deal value amounts to $348 million. The company disclosed the transaction on April 2, 2026, in a filing to the Warsaw Stock Exchange, while the deal details were also confirmed by Ukrainian business media.
According to the company, the acquisition price is 5% below the independently assessed market value of Enselco, estimated at $366 million. Kernel said the valuation was prepared by an international expert at the company’s request under the supervision of independent directors. It was the directors with no conflict of interest who approved the deal terms, while Kernel’s majority shareholder, Andriy Verevskyi, abstained from voting on the transaction.
Payment for the asset will be made in two stages: $300 million is to be paid immediately after the signing of the sale and purchase agreement, while the remaining amount is due by June 30, 2026. Kernel explicitly states that the transaction is intended to strengthen its core production supply chain and support both grain exports and the oilseed processing value chain.
The transaction perimeter includes not only the assets that Kernel sold in 2022–2023 for $210 million, but also additional assets acquired and integrated by Enselco. These include, in particular, 56,000 hectares of leased land, a grain silo network, grain trucks, agricultural machinery, equipment, and related working capital. This means the company is effectively bringing back previously divested assets in an expanded form.
Over the past year, Enselco has significantly increased its scale. Its land bank grew from 134,000 hectares in 2022 to 190,000 hectares in 2026, while its logistics and grain storage infrastructure was also expanded. Separate reports in Ukrainian media specify that the key driver of this growth was the integration of Agro-Region’s assets, which Enselco completed in early 2026.
In particular, following the acquisition of Agro-Region, Enselco added around 41,000 hectares to its land bank, as well as infrastructure and operating assets in the Kyiv, Chernihiv, Zhytomyr, and Khmelnytskyi regions. The company reported that it completed full operational and technological synchronization of these assets within two months, while the planned 2026 harvest within the updated perimeter is estimated at 1.4 million tonnes.
Kernel CEO Yevhen Osypov said the acquisition of Enselco reflects a shift in the agricultural market structure: land is becoming an increasingly scarce resource, and the strongest positions belong to companies that combine production, technology, processing, and logistics within a single model. The company also emphasized that Enselco and Kernel already had a long history of close operational cooperation, making the consolidation a logical strategic step to strengthen economies of scale.
For the investment market, the transaction is notable for several reasons. First, it is one of the largest disclosed M&A deals in Ukraine’s agricultural sector this year. Second, the transaction demonstrates that even during wartime, the largest players are willing to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for control over land, grain elevators, logistics, and field infrastructure. Third, it is another signal that land bank consolidation in Ukraine is continuing, while business scale remains one of the key factors of competitiveness.
Kernel itself enters 2026 under financial pressure. In the first half of fiscal year 2026, the company reduced net profit by 33% to $119 million, while revenue amounted to $1.924 billion, down 1% year-on-year, and EBITDA declined by 14% to $247 million. At the same time, the company continues to go through corporate and legal proceedings related to its delisting from the Warsaw Stock Exchange and disputes with minority shareholders, although recent court rulings in Luxembourg were in Kernel’s favor.
