Business news from Ukraine

Industrial park (IP) “Belaya Tserkva” intends to start construction of two more factories in 2025, said Alexander Protsyuk, business development director of the industrial park.

“We now have five operating plants, three more are under construction and next year we will lay two more plants. That is, it will be more than 1 thousand jobs for Bila Tserkva, which is a significant achievement for a city of 250 thousand residents,” he said during the Ukrainian Automotive and Mobility Forum 2024 in Lviv.

Protsyuk recalled that since the beginning of the full-scale military invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation IP “Bila Tserkva” managed to attract three foreign investors – one of the world’s largest manufacturers of everyday goods company Uniliver, manufacturer of spare parts for electric vehicles InTiCa Systems, and a supplier of thin slab structures Finnish Peikko Group (whose plant is under construction – IF-U).

“InTiCa was the first company in Ukraine to obtain war risk insurance, and I will say that the quality of Ukrainian products is an order of magnitude higher than in its Czech division, where Ukrainians work, and in its Mexican division, which works for the American market. And now InTiCa is at a crossroads – they would very much like to move the plant from the Czech Republic to Ukraine, but they are worried about the Vienna risks. But I think we will expand their plant at our location,” Protsyuk said.

He also added that the work with Uniliver and Peikko Group lasted more than a year. “For these three successful cases we have four unsuccessful ones – these are large multinational companies, which for various reasons refused to enter or expand business in Ukraine,” – said the director of business development of IP ”Bila Tserkva.

Regarding the attractiveness of the park for investors, Protsyuk emphasized that for production cases location is certainly important (for example, in border areas), but equally important is access to high-quality but expensive labor and quick access to communications.

“These are two key things that attract investors – we don’t have to spend time on connecting to the networks, capacities are coordinated, and we have received funding from the government under the FE program. We have an unsuccessful history with USAID, but that was a good experience as well. We use all possible types of financing, including bank and grant financing,” Protsyuk said.

According to him today in the IP “Belaya Tserkva” of 36 hectares free 12 hectares, and in “Belaya Tserkva 2” – 24 hectares, and there is a built production facility of 2 thousand square meters, with connected communications in the neighborhood of Peikko and Uniliver.

“And we advise foreign investors who want to reduce the cost of production to keep up with global competition to think not only about investing in border cities like Lviv, for example, but also to shift a bit to the east, because the risks are not much bigger, but the advantages – good wages, freer access to communications, electricity – can offset these risks,” emphasizes Protsyuk.

“And we hope that next year we will have two more successful examples,” he summarized.

IP “Belaya Tserkva” and “Belaya Tserkva 2” – projects of the holding company UFuture of entrepreneur Vasily Khmelnitsky, were included in the Register of industrial parks in 2018.

On the developed territory of IP “Bila Tserkva” 41 square meters of production and warehouse premises were built and 14 residents were attracted, among which, in addition to Unilever, InTiCa Systems, Peikko and Pripravka relocated from Kharkiv since 2022, there is also a logistics depot of “Novaya Poshta”, a grain storage complex “Volytsya Agro”, a factory of electrical fittings Plank Electrotechnic, a manufacturer of high-rise equipment for construction work Virastar.

https://interfax.com.ua/