The company was founded on 29 May 1996 in
Kakhovka. It was founded by two Swedish entrepreneurs,
Johan Boden and
Carl Sturen, who first came to
Ukraine in 1993. They were both 19 years old and had been involved in a family business producing vegetables in Sweden. The low cucumber harvest that year in
Estonia, where they had been buying their raw materials, forced the entrepreneurs to start looking for a replacement for the lost
Estonian crop. Juhan and Karl returned to
Ukraine to find a place for future production. By 1995 Johan and Karl realised the need for their own production. In their search for investors, they found support from
Professor Hans Rausing, the founder of
Tetra Pak, a leading food packaging company. Chumak was the first company in
Ukraine to produce
ketchup and most sauces without preservatives. Since the end of 2007, it has become the only company in the
CIS to produce preservative-free mayonnaise. In 2008 the
tomato processing plant had an annual capacity of 2,500,000 kg of
tomatoes. In March 2008, the investment company
Dragon Capital and
East Capital Bering Ukraine Fund together acquired 70% of Chumak's shares from one of its founders,
Professor Hans Rausing, with the remaining 30% owned by
Johan Boden and
Karl Sturen. In the same year, the construction of a new office in
Kakhovka was completed. In 2009 the company launched a pasta factory, a separate workshop for the production of pasta. In 2015 a workshop for the production of in-house juices was launched in
Kakhovka. Since the end of 2015 the company has been building a
roasted sunflower seed production facility. The company plans to launch its own production in this area in the first quarter of 2016. In 2019, Chumak became a part of the Delta Wilmar, a Ukrainian subsidiary of
Wilmar International. ==Activity==