Ukrainian Universal Exchange LLC (UUB, Poltava) sold almost 500 thousand cubic meters during trading in May 2022. m of wood and lumber, which exceeds the total revenue for two months – January and February.
Serhiy Gladkiy Gladkiy, director of UUB, spoke about the rapid restoration of exchange trading in raw wood and sawn timber in the conditions of the Russian military invasion of Ukraine in an exclusive interview with the Interfax-Ukraine agency.
He recalled that on the day of the full-scale Russian invasion on February 24, the previous electronic trading system, leased by the organization at that time, stopped its work. Due to its sudden outage, UUB was forced to cancel and annul the results of some trading in the first three weeks of the war, as well as accelerate the launch of its own trading system, which was being developed by the exchange, which was able to start working on April 19.
“We were able to launch our system from April 19, and by the end of the month, our state forestry enterprises had earned UAH 144 million and sold 48,000 cubic meters of wood. This is a good indicator, taking into account that part of the regions is under temporary occupation. In our auction in April took over a thousand participants. So we got out of the situation: we used all our resources, came up with our own system and resumed the market,” Gladkiy said.
He stressed that already in May the volume of exchange trade in wood and sawn timber increased almost tenfold compared to the second half of April – in May, state forestry enterprises sold almost 500 thousand cubic meters at UUB. m of wood and lumber.
“This is even more than the pre-war volumes of February and January combined, so the market is recovering quickly,” Gladky said.
UUB was founded in 1997 and operates in the areas of public procurement (ProZorro, tender.uub.com.ua platform) and the sale of state and municipal property (Prozorro.Sales, sale.uub.com.ua platform).
On the exchange site, auction participants can acquire rights of claim under loan agreements, the right to lease freight cars, residential and non-residential real estate, scrap metal, vehicles and other fixed assets. Also, the activities of the exchange are the sale of property of bankrupt enterprises, forward contracts for the purchase of real estate, land and raw wood.
In December 2021, the exchange became the leader in the country in sales of raw wood, having sold 614 thousand cubic meters of this exchange commodity for UAH 1.67 billion in a month.
SAWN TIMBER MARKET, UKRAINIAN WOOD
