Agrotrade agricultural holding company has achieved a record winter wheat yield in the Chernihiv region of 8.4 tons/ha of net weight, or 150% of the planned target, according to the company’s press service on Facebook.
“High yields were also recorded in one of the fields in the Sumy region — 8.15 tons/ha, or 136% of the target. And this is only 20 km from the border with the enemy. This is further evidence of the resilience of our team and the effectiveness of agricultural technologies even in difficult conditions,” the statement said.
Agrotrade emphasized that these results are not accidental, but the result of systematic work. The agro-industrial department analyzed previous seasons, reviewed cultivation technology, and made specific adjustments from nutrition to protection, the release said.
“This year, we have improved our winter wheat cultivation technologies. We used fractional nitrogen application, double fungicide protection of the ear, and complete control of grass weeds across the entire area — this is not a very common but extremely effective practice. We removed all the weeds, leaving only the crop, and this yielded results. In addition, we update our variety portfolio every year, introducing varieties that perform consistently well in our conditions. This season, everything came together: technology, preparation, and weather conditions,” explained Oleksandr Ovsianyk, director of the agro-industrial department at Agrotrade, as quoted in the report.
In the 2025 season, Agrotrade is growing winter wheat on 14,500 hectares in the Chernihiv, Sumy, Poltava, and Kharkiv regions. Currently, more than 80% of the production area has been threshed. The winter harvest will soon be complete, the agricultural holding concluded.
The Agrotrade group of companies is a vertically integrated holding company with a full agricultural cycle (production, processing, storage, and trade of agricultural products). It cultivates over 70,000 hectares of land in the Chernihiv, Sumy, Poltava, and Kharkiv regions. Its main crops are sunflower, corn, winter wheat, soybeans, and rapeseed. It has its own network of elevators with a total storage capacity of 570,000 tons.
The group also produces hybrid seeds of corn, sunflower, barley, and winter wheat. In 2014, a seed plant with a capacity of 20,000 tons of seeds per year was built on the basis of the Kolos seed farm (Kharkiv region). In 2018, Agrotrade launched its own brand, Agroseeds.
The founder of Agrotrade is Vsevolod Kozhemyako.
JTI Ukraine, one of the largest companies on the market, paid UAH 21.2 billion in taxes to the state budget in the first half of 2025, which is 75% more than in the same period of 2024.
“The main factors behind the growth were legislative changes, in particular the increase in excise tax rates, as well as improvements in the company’s operating performance and changes in the exchange rate,” the company said in a press release on Monday.
According to the press release, excise taxes traditionally accounted for the largest share of tax revenues, amounting to UAH 16.4 billion, which is 81% more than in the first half of 2024.
It is noted that VAT payments increased by 73% to UAH 2.76 billion as a result of stable demand, adaptation to regulatory changes, and balanced cash flow management.
“Significant growth was also recorded in other areas: income tax (+45%), customs duties (+37%), single social contribution (+24%), personal income tax and military tax (+36%),” according to a press release quoting JTI Ukraine CFO Olga Sulitska.
The company added that in the second half of the year it plans to strengthen risk management while maintaining stability in tax and social obligations.
JTI Ukraine is part of Japan Tobacco International (headquartered in Geneva), the international tobacco business of the Japan Tobacco group of companies (headquartered in Tokyo). It has been operating in Ukraine since 1999 and is currently represented by two companies with over 800 employees: JTI International Company Ukraine, with its central office in Kyiv, and four regional offices and a factory in Kremenchuk (Poltava region), JTI International Ukraine.
JTI Ukraine manufactures products for both the domestic market and for export to nine countries around the world. The declared investments over 26 years of operation amount to over $433.7 million, with additional investments of $60 million planned for 2024–2026 in the category of tobacco products for electric heating (TPE).
According to YouControl, JTI International Company Ukraine increased its revenue by 37.7% to UAH 18.60 billion in the first half of this year, and its net profit by 15.7% to UAH 1.11 billion.
Revenue of JT International Ukraine grew by 61.8% in January-June this year, to UAH 4.74 billion, while net profit doubled to UAH 1.23 billion, according to YouControl data.
As reported, another major player in the tobacco market, Philip Morris Ukraine, previously reported a 17% increase in tax payments for January-June 2025, to UAH 28.9 billion (excise tax – UAH 22.9 billion, VAT – UAH 5.4 billion).
According to the Ministry of Finance, excise tax revenues in the first half of 2025 increased by 45.7% to UAH 132.7 billion.
Insurance company PJSC IC “PZU Ukraine” (Kyiv) attracted UAH 1.322 billion in premiums in January-June 2025, which is UAH 255 million, or 24% more than in the same period last year, according to the company’s press release.
The largest increase in payments for the reporting period was recorded in the segment of compulsory civil liability insurance for owners of land vehicles (OSCPV) – by 41%, to UAH 429 million, or 32% of the total volume, CASCO – by 27%, to UAH 247 million, or 19% of the total volume.
In the first half of 2025, the company attracted UAH 325 million in insurance premiums under Green Card policies, which is 25% of the insurer’s total revenue and 26% more than in the same period of 2024.
Medical insurance accounted for 12% of the company’s portfolio, with the insurance company collecting UAH 160 million in payments under such contracts in the first half of 2025.
PZU Ukraine’s revenues from other insurance contracts in January–June 2025 amounted to UAH 160 million, or 12% of the total.
PZU Ukraine has been operating in the Ukrainian market since 1993. PZU Ukraine is supported by one of the largest insurance groups in Central and Eastern Europe, the PZU Group (which includes the parent company of PZU Ukraine, PZU S.A.).
In January-June of this year, the mining and metallurgical group Metinvest, including its associated companies and joint ventures, transferred UAH 9.3 billion to budgets of all levels in Ukraine, compared with UAH 9.9 billion in the same period last year.
According to the company’s press release on Monday, the three largest payments were subsoil use fees, which amounted to UAH 2.5 billion, a single social contribution of UAH 1.7 billion, and UAH 1.6 billion in personal income tax.
In addition, Metinvest’s Ukrainian enterprises paid UAH 670 million in income tax and UAH 328 million in environmental tax in January-June 2025. Military tax for the first half of this year increased more than threefold compared to the same period in 2024, to UAH 472 million, and land tax increased by 5% to UAH 659 million.
“In times of war, paying taxes is our direct contribution to the protection and restoration of the country. After all, the financial responsibility of business is a source of strength for the army, medicine, education, and millions of Ukrainian families. We have learned to move forward even in the most difficult times — to work despite threats, to support the economy, and to help the front. We are keeping up the pace because we know that our resilience is part of our common victory,” said Yuriy Ryzhenkov, CEO of the group.
As previously reported, in 2024, Metinvest transferred UAH 19.8 billion in taxes and fees to budgets at all levels in Ukraine.
Metinvest is a vertically integrated group of mining and metallurgical enterprises. Its enterprises are located in Ukraine, in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, and Dnipropetrovsk regions, as well as in the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The main shareholders of the holding company are the SCM Group (71.24%) and Smart Holding (23.76%). Metinvest Holding LLC is the managing company of the Metinvest Group.
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has identified cases of unlicensed activity in the non-bank financial services market, in particular the exchange of cryptocurrencies for currency, money transfers, and the provision of loans, and will strengthen its supervision in this area.
“We are working systematically to limit any opportunities to use the banking and payment infrastructure to serve the shadow economy (…) We will intensify our activities in the future,” NBU Governor Andriy Pyshnyy said on his Facebook page.
He stressed that de-shadowing will contribute to the formation of a sustainable investment resource for the economy, and also announced the launch of a new area of work for the NBU – identifying unlicensed activities in the non-bank financial services and payment markets.
“Unfortunately, we see that outside the legal field of Ukraine and the relevant supervision of the NBU, citizens are being offered services that have the characteristics of financial services: transfer and issuance of funds, provision of loans, exchange of cryptocurrencies for currency,” Pyshny wrote.
The head of the NBU noted that the goal is not only to identify unauthorized market participants, but also to bring them back into the legal field or initiate legal proceedings against them.
As reported, the National Bank continues to investigate the activities of companies that may be providing financial services without the appropriate licenses, including Obmen24, X-Change, Liberty Finance (KIT GROUP), Tsarsky.io, FinMobile, and Trustee Plus.
Thanks to the creation of a marketplace with government bonds and more than 30 other instruments, as well as educational and advertising efforts, the Univer investment group opens about a thousand new securities accounts for clients every month, according to the group’s founder and president, Taras Kozak.
“I think that thanks to all our efforts, educational and promotional, we are now the leader in terms of the number of accounts opened: somewhere around a thousand new accounts per month,” he said in an interview with the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.
According to Kozak, the company currently has about 20,000 clients.
According to the Financial Market Contract Servicing Center (FMSC), as of August 1, there were 211,160 unique investors registered, with their number increasing by 13,370 since the beginning of this year.
“I cannot say exactly how much money, but it is many billions of hryvnia that have been invested in various financial instruments,” the investment banker added.
He specified that NovaPay is currently the largest partner, having introduced an alternative to deposits through repo transactions with its own bonds, which are administered by Univer.
At the same time, according to Kozak, in addition to NovaPay, the investment group offers its clients the largest selection of securities in Ukraine through its own app: in addition to 10 series of OVGZ, there are more than 30 other instruments.
“We are creating a marketplace where Ukrainians can buy OVGZ, funds, corporate bonds, and foreign securities that were introduced in Ukraine before the war, all in one place. When our clients want to sell, we list them in the cabinet, and our other clients buy them,” explained the president of Univer.
He emphasized that the investment group only allows instruments in which it is prepared to invest a portion of its portfolios to be listed in the cabinet.
According to him, Univer offers investors the opportunity to purchase securities from its own funds (Mykhailo Hrushevsky and Taras Shevchenko, which invest in Ukraine;
Yaroslav Mudry and Ataman, which invested in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq indices before the war, but now their investments are limited), as well as real estate and land funds.
As examples of real estate funds, he cited Andriy Zhurzhiy’s Inzhura funds and two Standard One funds, which are buying apartments in large income-generating buildings under construction near VDNH (S1 VDNH) and in Obolon (S1 Obolon). Kozak clarified that at the same time, the investment group does not engage in construction financing funds on principle.
“The third type of funds are land funds: Tvoe Kolo, Gruntovno, and the First Ukrainian Agrarian Fund. They purchase land on their balance sheet and then lease it out. The funds receive some dividends from rent payments, but the client is mainly interested in buying a piece of land for a small check of 100-200 thousand hryvnia,” the investment banker described the land funds.
He reminded that Univer’s own funds are open, while real estate and land funds are qualified with a minimum contribution requirement of 122,000 hryvnia.
Kozak noted that the investment group does not yet plan to create its own real estate and land funds, but is focused solely on managing its own funds, which invest in securities. At the same time, he pointed out that securities from competitors will be added to marketplaces and funds to expand the offering.
In his opinion, the benefit for the client is the convenience of having all reporting and financial instruments in one place to effectively manage them and transfer money from one asset to another.
Among other areas of activity of Univer, Kozak highlighted the registration or assistance in the creation of new financial instruments: bonds, funds, and a number of other instruments.
“In the case of bonds, we are probably the largest underwriter at the moment,” said the company’s CEO. As an example, he cited the issue of bonds backed by Novus for UAH 400 million and bonds of fintech company Activitis for UAH 300 million.
In addition, the asset management company Univer Management, which is part of the group, offers venture fund management for third-party businesses that are structured in this way, Kozak said.
“At times when there is no market, and such times are very common for us, unfortunately — in 2014, 2020, and 2022 — this allows us to survive,” he noted.
