Agro-Region has reduced the cost of grain and oilseeds transportation by up to 30% by creating its own fleet of 40 grain carriers, the company’s press service reported on its Facebook page.
“As of today, 58 thousand tons of grains and oilseeds have been exported, with the balance for export of more than 60 thousand tons, including 30 thousand tons of corn and wheat,” said Oleksandr Tymoshenko, commercial director of the agricultural holding, adding that sunflower and rapeseed were the most profitable in the 2024 season due to higher prices than a year earlier.
Agro-Region pointed out that the main volumes of agricultural products are transported by rail and road to ports, and then the grain is exported by sea. Several factors contributed to the reduction in transportation costs, including the company’s own grain carrier fleet, which guarantees flexibility in planning and a fixed cost of transportation.
“Agro-Region received 25 hopper cars as part of the USAID Economic Support for Ukraine grant program. After that, it raised additional funds and invested them in an additional 15 railcars.
Agro-Region owns a land bank of 39 thousand hectares in Kyiv, Chernihiv, Zhytomyr, and Khmelnytskyi regions. It specializes in crop production. It consists of 11 companies organized into four crop production clusters. It has two elevators – Boryspil elevator with a capacity of 73 thousand tons and Miropil elevator with a capacity of 52 thousand tons.
Agro-Region’s annual harvest of grains and oilseeds is up to 200 thousand tons.
In April 2021, the Swedish company Lobiu Sala AB, owned by the former Minister of Economy of Ukraine Aivaras Abromavičius, received permission from the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine to buy the Swedish Agro Region Stockholm Holding, which manages the Agro-Region group of companies in Ukraine.
Agrane Agro Holding has modernized the grain receiving infrastructure at the Service Grain elevator complex (Odesa region) and laid a 200-meter railway line to it, the group’s press service reports.
According to the report, the newly laid railway line allows the company to ship up to 30 cars per day, which reduces the cost and speeds up the delivery of grain to ports.
In addition, Service Grain has equipped three hubs for receiving grain from trucks, including heavy trucks (up to 20 m long). With a total capacity of 2,000 tons, the elevator complex is ready to receive grain up to 1,700 tons per day.
According to the agroholding, the storage capacity of the complex, which is equipped with equipment from the domestic manufacturer KMZ Industries, has already reached 100 thousand tons.
“Thanks to the introduction of modern technologies, the elevator can simultaneously accept and ship both large and small batches of grain in a short time,” Agrane summarized.
“Agrain is engaged in the cultivation and storage of grains and oilseeds, as well as livestock farming. Before the full-scale Russian invasion, the agricultural holding included 11 agricultural enterprises. It cultivated about 110,000 hectares in Zhytomyr, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Odesa, and Cherkasy regions.
The holding is owned by SAS Investcompagnie (France).
Ukraine’s state budget has received $235 million in concessional financing from the Government of Japan under the World Bank’s new systemic projects, the Resilient, Inclusive and Environmentally Balanced Enterprise (RISE) and the Increasing Access to and Resilience of Education in Crisis-affected Ukraine (LEARN).
As the Ministry of Finance reported in a press release on Wednesday, the RISE program received a $130 million loan that will be used to address critical issues that hinder the growth and sustainable development of the private sector.
The Ministry clarified that the $105 million in Japanese funds received under the LEARN project is the result of the Ukrainian government’s implementation of measures to ensure safe face-to-face learning in schools by providing subventions for shelters and school buses in 2024.
The projects are implemented using the Program-for-results (PforR) financial instrument, when funds are allocated after Ukraine has achieved some of the results.
The Ministry of Finance noted that by the end of 2024, Ukraine expects to raise another $120 million and $95 million under RISE and LEARN, respectively.
The development company Alterra Group, which is currently implementing the Formatsiya.Lviv industrial park project, intends to build a network of seven such parks, said Olena Podolska, head of the company’s international business unit.
“Lviv will be our first park, then we will go to Rivne, two will be in Kyiv, and then we will return to the western region – Ivano-Frankivsk, Vinnytsia, and Khmelnytsky,” she said during the Ukrainian Automotive and Mobility Forum 2024 in Lviv, organized by the Ukrainian Automotive and Mobility Cluster with the support of the USAID Competitive Economy of Ukraine Program.
Podolska noted that there are already several local manufacturers who plan to open 10,000 square meters of production facilities in the Formation.Lviv IP, including the USP sandwich panel manufacturer.
In addition, during the forum, the CEO and owner of Lois Motors LLC, which is implementing a project to create a light electric vehicle LUAZ and plans to scale it up, announced his interest in locating his production in the park.
“I plan to scale up the project and cooperate with the Formatsiya.Lviv industrial park to open either a car production facility for people with disabilities or the next stage of our production,” he said during the forum.
Alterra Group is building 150 square meters of production, warehouse and office space on 30 hectares of land in Formatsiya.Lviv (formerly Formatsiya.Syhnivka). It will include a prototyping laboratory, R&D center, business incubator, event space, offices, and showrooms.
According to the project presentation, the first phase of the park is scheduled to be commissioned in the first quarter of 2025.
Alterra Group LLC is a Ukrainian company specializing in the development and management of turnkey commercial real estate.
The company manages 35 facilities with a total area of 175 thousand square meters. These include warehouse and production complexes, business centers, shopping and entertainment centers.
The company’s completed commercial real estate projects in Ukraine include the PORT logistics center, PROSTIR business hub (both in Lviv), Palo Alto business center (Kyiv), and Joule and JAM warehouse complexes in Kyiv region.
Exports of IT services in 2024 will decline by 4-6% compared to 2023 and may amount to $6.3-6.4 billion, Lviv IT Cluster predicts.
“The decline in IT services exports that began in 2023 continues. Under the optimistic scenario, by the end of 2024, it will decrease by 4% compared to 2023. Under the pessimistic scenario, this figure will reach 6%. We should expect $6.3-6.4 billion. Thus, in 2024, the tech industry will not show growth for the second year in a row compared to last year,” follows a study by IT Research Ukraine conducted by the Lviv IT Cluster.
At the same time, despite the challenges of a full-scale war, the technology industry in Ukraine remains one of the key industries and provides significant foreign exchange earnings. The IT sector is the largest exporter of services in Ukraine, accounting for 38% of total exports of services. In total exports, IT ranks second after food exports, the study says.
According to the data, 2118 IT companies operate in Ukraine. Half of them are service companies, including 47% outsourcing and 3% outstaffing. Another 31% of companies are product companies. The rest have a mixed business model.
45.7% of the IT companies surveyed said they do not plan to open new representative offices in the short term, 17.1% plan to open in Ukraine, and 34.3% abroad. Most want to open a representative office in Poland. In addition, 6% of CEOs plan to close their office in Ukraine.
The number of specialists working in the IT industry in 2024 decreased by 1.6% to 302 thousand. Most of them, 238 thousand people, live and work in Ukraine. The number of Ukrainian specialists abroad also decreased to 62-64 thousand people against 65 thousand in 2023, the study says. The average age of a Ukrainian IT specialist is 31.5 years. The majority of respondents, 68%, do not have children.
The median income of IT professionals in Ukraine, according to IT Research Ukraine 2024, decreased by 1.7% compared to 2023 and amounts to $2590. At the same time, the majority of respondents reported that their expenses for rent, food, and other basic needs have increased.
Most 97% of IT companies donate and implement projects that bring Ukraine closer to victory. 67.6% of surveyed companies have mobilized specialists on their staff. IT companies support their employees serving in the Ukrainian Defense Forces by providing them with job security, fixed salaries, or partial compensation.
The shareholders of Credit Agricole Bank Ukraine decided to keep all profits generated in Ukraine inside the country, thus increasing the Tier 1 capital, said Vitaliy Kucher, Member of the Management Board and CFO of the bank.
“We have made a political decision, and all the income that the bank earns in Ukraine remains in Ukraine. That is, we do not postpone the distribution of dividends, we distribute them, we increase the Tier 1 capital,” he said at the Association of Ukrainian Banks conference ‘Financial Sector of Ukraine 2024: Results, Challenges, Forecasts’ in Kyiv on Wednesday.
“That is, the money stays here forever to support the economy, to build a sufficient buffer for the development of lending,” Kucher added.
According to him, in case of building an acceptable investment climate and predictable environment, conducting the right regulatory and state policy, “money will flow here (to Ukraine – IF-U).”
The CFO also noted that the group’s central management is actively involved in the subsidiary’s operations, in particular, unlike a number of other foreign banks, he personally visits Ukraine during a full-scale war.
Credit Agricole Bank (formerly Index Bank) was founded in 1993. Its sole shareholder is Credit Agricole S.A. (France). According to the National Bank of Ukraine, as of October 1, Credit Agricole Bank ranked 10th in terms of total assets (UAH 121.08 billion) among 62 banks operating in the country. The net profit of the financial institution for the first nine months of 2024 amounted to UAH 5.12 billion, and its equity as of October 1 amounted to UAH 14.15 billion.
