Agricom Group in the second half of 2021 invested about $ 2 million in the development of a plant for the production of cereal flakes under the Dobrodiya brand, located in the village of Mykhailo-Kotsiubynske (Chernihiv region), the company also plans to launch three new lines of products next year.
The co-owner and executive director of the agricultural holding and the new president of the Ukrainian Agribusiness Club, Petro Melnyk, told about this in an exclusive interview with the Interfax-Ukraine agency.
“In 2021, we adopted a new strategy, according to which we plan to invest about $ 20 million in the development of processing in Ukraine within five years. Over the past six months, we have invested about $ 2 million. Now the construction of a production warehouse is in full swing, this is an additional investment. I hope we will participate in the opening by spring or closer to summer,” he said.
In addition, the agricultural holding plans to start production of three new product lines in 2022 at the specified production site with an area of 6 hectares in Chernihiv region.
“Next year we plan to launch three new product lines. These are not cereals, these are other products, we will actively announce their appearance on the shelves. Six hectares of the production site, where we see the second and third lines of production in the future,” Melnyk emphasized.
In addition, the group of companies is considering the feasibility of launching production of fuel pellets in Zhytomyr region.
According to Melnyk, Agricom Group is implementing the relevant plans thanks to a successful season in terms of financial indicators and an increase in sales of products under the Dobrodiya trademark.
The agro-industrial group, founded in 2013, specializes in the development, production and distribution of cereal-based food products. The group of companies cultivates about 28,000 hectares in Luhansk, Chernihiv, Rivne and Zhytomyr regions.
Etalon Corporation in 2022 expects prices for manufactured buses to rise by at least 20%, primarily due to a sharp rise in prices for energy and materials, president of the corporation Volodymyr Butko said.
“Metal prices have almost doubled, but I’m not talking about gas and electricity at all. Therefore, today it is clear that the prices at which we sold school buses will not work out, stocks are running out, and we say that prices will rise, at a minimum, by 20%. Plus wages, which we must increase – this is also in the price of products. Therefore, 20% is still the growth to which we are accustomed, but we think with horror that if the price of energy resources goes up two or three times, it will be possible to forget about production and sales,” Butko said at a final press conference in Kyiv.
He noted that the most energy-intensive production within the corporation is the forge plant.
According to Vitaliy Tretiak, the director of Chernihiv Forging Plant, this year the plant has increased the load of equipment by 25% due to the development of 20 units of new products.
“We have achieved in the cost price per 1 kg of products a decrease in the use of electricity in kilowatts by 5%, gas – by 3%, but these works were brought to zero by a sharp rise in prices – for electricity for the year by 90%, gas – by 272%, plus problems due to the pandemic – and this year we have somewhat lost the export component – traditional export to Poland, Germany. And now we are negotiating with companies from the countries of the former Yugoslavia, the Scandinavian countries, the United States,” Tretiak said.
He noted that the share of energy resources in the prime cost this year was 25% – 25.5% in kilowatts (three years ago – 30%), and taking into account the price it is already up to 50%, which is “very difficult” for the enterprise.
Etalon Corporation unites 21 enterprises. The main areas of activity are the production of vehicles (buses of various classes, trolleybuses, trams), mechanical engineering, warehouse logistics, water purification and saturation equipment.
As reported, about 255 buses (including 200 school buses) and four trolleybuses were sold in 2021.
DTEK Energy expects two more ships with 147,000 tonnes of thermal coal from Colombia and the United States to arrive in Ukraine by the end of the week, the company’s press service said.
According to its data, the first ship with 75,000 tonnes of coal from Colombia will arrive at the port of Chornomorsk next Friday, the second – with 72,000 tonnes from the United States will be moored at the TIS port at the weekend.
Coal from the fifth and sixth Panamax class ships that have arrived since the end of November will replenish the warehouses of the company’s TPPs.
“DTEK Energy continues to actively supply coal to the Ukrainian energy system. In addition to the four Panamax ships with imported coal, which have already arrived, have been fully unloaded or are now being sent to Ukrainian thermal power plants, we meet two more ships,” DTEK Energy CEO Ildar Saleev said.
In addition, the company has agreed on an additional ninth vessel. In general, this is about 618,000 tonnes of coal for the needs of Ukrainian thermal power plants. The first ship contracted by the company for the needs of the state-owned TPPs of Centrenergo arrived in Ukraine on November 20. The second, third and fourth Panamax ships with coal for DTEK Energy TPPs arrived on December 5, 16 and 17.
Since the beginning of December, the company has already imported about 200,000 tonnes of coal by sea. For the stable passage of the heating season, the company has contracted more than 1 million tonnes of imported fuel to date.
DTEK Energy is an operating company in charge of coal mining and electricity production from coal within the structure of Rinat Akhmetov’s DTEK Holding.
Tathkrah General Trading (Luxembourg, owned by Belgian citizen Jan Tees) on September 7, 2021 acquired 100% of the charter capital of Finart Capital Invest LLC (DivanTV trademark), but still cannot get control over the service.
Representative of Tathkrah General Trading Viktor Zakharchuk said at a press conference on Wednesday that the company had reached an agreement with Mikarnial Ltd. on the acquisition of 100% of Finart Capital Invest LLC on September 7 this year..
Zakharchuk also said that after the purchase of the company, foreign investors faced resistance from the management, which controls DivanTV, in particular “the representative of the minority shareholder Mikarnial Mykola Fadeev and former head of the service Arkadiy Kaniuk.”
“The people who previously controlled Finart Capital Invest refused to implement the terms of this agreement, refused to transfer any documentation, access codes to the DivanTV website control panel and any material values that belonged to the company. Although they sent a report, in which they indicated that they were all dismissed, to the tax office at that moment,” Zakharchuk said.
Later, the former management of the company turned to the Ministry of Justice with a complaint about the illegal actions of the public registrar when buying the company. And, as Zakharchuk said, the Ministry of Justice ordered to cancel the state registration of the purchase of Finart Capital Invest LLC.
He also said that as of August 2021, DivanTV had UAH 20 million in arrears to Ukrainian media groups, and the total debt was estimated at UAH 45 million. At the same time, Tathkrah General Trading decided to allocate $5 million to pay off Divan TV’s debts.
The DivanTV website is currently operational, but the company’s app has been removed from the App Store and Google Play. Its official Facebook page has been closed.
Sugar refineries of the Astarta agricultural holding processed 1.844 million tonnes of sugar beet and produced 266,000 tonnes of sugar in 2021, which is 18% more than in 2020, the company said on Thursday.
“The organizational and technical measures carried out in the current season and the introduction of resource-saving technologies allowed Astarta to increase the energy efficiency of sugar production and reduce gas consumption for processing 1 tonne of beets by an average of 6% compared to 2020,” executive director of the company Valeriy Sokolenko said in a press release.
He added that in 2021, Hlobyne Sugar Refinery operated on biogas produced at company’s Hlobyne Bioenergy Complex from organic residues from sugar production (raw pulp).
Astarta also said that 99% of the produced sugar corresponds to the highest quality category, of which 53,000 tonnes are of extra quality.
Taking into account the processing of imported raw cane sugar, the agricultural holding’s total sugar production this year amounted to 339,000 tonnes, the press release says.
It indicates that the processing season lasted 100 days, the sugar content of raw materials remained at a high level and an average level for the holding’s enterprises amounted to 17.0% (on average in Ukraine, according to Ukrsugar, – 16.9%), and the sugar yield – 14.4% (14.2%).
Astarta recalled that in 2021, the holding’s enterprises harvested 1.584 million tonnes of sugar beet (yield – 47.4 tonnes/ha), 508,000 tonnes of corn (8.6 tonnes/ha), 94,500 tonnes of soybeans (3.0 tonnes/ha), 76,200 tonnes of sunflower (2.7 tonnes/ha), 268,000 tonnes of winter wheat (5.76 tonnes/ha) and 23,400 tonnes of winter rapeseed (3.24 tonnes per ha).
Astarta is a vertically integrated agro-industrial holding operating in eight regions of Ukraine.
Israeli Ambassador to Ukraine Michael Brodsky expects the growth of Israeli investments in the IT sector of Ukraine after the adoption of the law on Diia City. “I believe that after the adoption of the law on Diia City new investments may come to Ukraine. We are already talking about a deeper participation of Israeli capital, Israeli companies in the IT market in Ukraine, as there are prerequisites for this. Now, together with the entry into force of Diia City, a legislative and tax base is being created. Therefore, I think that this direction today is very promising,” he told Interfax-Ukraine in an exclusive interview.
According to him, services related to the IT sector may also be included in the updated free trade agreement (FTA), the preparation of which will start in 2022.
“The IT sector is one of the main sectors of cooperation between Israel and Ukraine in recent years, as over half of the outsourcing of the Israeli high-tech today falls on Ukraine,” he said.
The ambassador also said “in Ukraine, there are 30,000 or 40,000 programmers for Israeli companies.”
“In other words, imagine that each of these programmers earns on average $3,000 to $4,000 a month at least, or even much more. But even if we take the minimum wages, it turns out that multiply 30,000 or 40,000 by $3,000 is the Israeli contribution to the Ukrainian economy, the contribution of Israeli companies,” Brodsky said.
On the other hand, according to him, “this is a Ukrainian contribution to the economy of our country, since Israel is sorely lacking in programmers.”
“Israeli high-tech is the locomotive of our economy. Income to the state treasury from high-tech is one of the most serious components of the Israeli national budget today. Therefore, if there are people in Ukraine who can help Israeli companies to fulfill their task, then that is great. This brings our countries closer together, and this is an absolutely mutually beneficial situation,” Brodsky said.
According to him, this direction is one of the basic in Ukrainian-Israeli cooperation, along with agriculture, irrigation and medicine. Brodsky said the company Netafim, which develops projects and sales of Israeli technologies in drip irrigation.
“Representatives of several Israeli companies recently visited the regions, and we hope that there will be a continuation, as the topic is relevant for both countries. We feel interest from Ukraine, the president spoke about this when he met our president here,” he said.
