You're reading: #46 Richest: Viktor Ivanchyk, 54

$270 million Married with two daughters Interests: agribusiness, banking

Sugar prices reached 25-year highs in 2009 and is expected to remain at elevated levels in the near term.

This translates into wide profit margins for Viktor Ivanchyk and his Russian business partner Valeriy Korotkov, whom media have dubbed Ukraine’s “sugar kings.”

Impressive financials aside, Ivanchyk knows when he sees value, but more importantly he knows what to do with it.

About half of his Astarta company income is derived from sugar sales. He owns lots of land – including an 180,000 hectare land bank – and sugar mills.

Ukraine’s land is richer than Europe’s which is why “it requires two to three times less fertilizer and technical input per hectare than European soil,” Ivanchuk told InvestGazeta in February 2009.

The avid downhill skier also has reliable business clients selling more than 80 percent of his sugar to big industrial consumers such as Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods, Nestle, Vitmark, Slavutych, Wimm-Bill-Dann, AVK, Danone and Sandora.

So what’s he been doing with his money? Re-investing and diversifying. Ivanchyk is now involved in cultivating milking cows and grows oilseeds and grain.

And to keep his harvest fresh, he’s also started building two grain storage elevators.

This looks like a sound strategy for a person who has witnessed his company’s revenues increase by more than 50 percent this year.