Agricultural company Grain Alliance (Sweden) with assets in Ukraine has purchased and installed four diesel electric generators with a total capacity of 1.7 MW at Piryatynskyi elevator in Poltava region, which will enable the company to ensure continuous operation during prolonged power outages.
As reported on the company website on Wednesday, thanks to its own power generation the enterprise works productively despite the difficulties with electricity in Ukraine: as of the morning of November 7, the granary with the total capacity of 100 thousand tons has stored almost 20 thousand tons of corn, over 23 thousand tons of soybeans and 1.5 thousand tons of sunflower.
“We installed and connected all four generators promptly almost on the day of receipt, despite the weather or other technical conditions. The cumulative capacity produced by the new elevators is 1.7 MW. Thus, the division has ensured its energy independence in order to meet the set production objectives to the end,” Grain Alliance quotes Piryatynsky elevator director Oleksandr Gavrilenko as saying.
Silos with a total capacity of up to 100 tons of agricultural products are installed on Piryatynsky granary: six silos of 8 tons each produced by “Lubnymash”, 4 silos of 12 tons by “Option Agro Bud” and two silos of 5 tons by KMZ Industries.
In total, Grain Alliance has six granaries in Ukraine with a total capacity of over 260 thousand tons.
Before war, the agricultural holding farmed 57 thousand hectares in Kyiv, Poltava, Chernigov and Cherkassy regions, grew over 300 thousand tons of grains and oilseeds a year, and owned more than a thousand head of cattle.
The founders of Harvest Moon East LLC (Baryshevka village, Kyiv region) and BZK Grain Alliance (Sweden) created a joint company, Grain Alliance, in 2009.
“Ukrzaliznytsia has increased cargo transportation by rail in October to 12.06 million tons, which is by 0.38 million tons, or 3.3%, more than in September, said deputy director of the department of commercial work “UZ” Valery Tkachev at a meeting with industry participants on Wednesday.
“In particular, 5.2 million tons (-0.137 million tons, or -0.3% compared to September 2022) were transported in export traffic. From March to October 2022, monthly rail freight volume increased from 8.299 million tons to 12.06 million tons per month (up +3.7 million tons per month or +45.3%). But this monthly volume of transportation, unfortunately, is much lower than the pre-war level,” Tkachev said on Facebook.
According to him, the transport of grain in October rose to 3.6 million tons (+197.8 thousand tons, or 5.8%), cement – up to 288.6 million tons (+21.9 thousand tons, or 8.2%), coal – up to 2.2 million tons (+18.7 thousand tons, or 0.8%), construction materials – up to 1.9 million tons (+85.6 thousand tons, or 4.6%).
At the same time, transportation of iron ore / manganese ore decreased to 1.4 million tons (-64.4 thousand tons, or 4.3%), and ferrous metals – up to 628.5 thousand tons (-63.8 thousand tons, or 9.2%), said the representative of UZ.
He also informed that in October railcar queue in the direction of western border crossing points has reduced by 1674 wagons, or 9%: from 18.2 thousand to 16.6 thousand at the beginning of November.
At the same time, according to Tkachev, the volume of orders at almost all border crossings significantly exceeds their capacity, so the Transport Logistics Center (TLC) is forced to apply reduction factors to match all orders received from exporters.
“Currently, all orders received from exporters before the 20th of the month preceding the transportation are processed by the CTL and partially agreed upon by foreign carriers and JSC “Ukrzaliznytsia”, – added Tkachev.
In addition, some foreign carriers temporarily suspended coordination of orders because of the large queue of loaded cars, said Deputy Director.
Distribution system operator DTEK Kyiv Electric Grids has added the addresses of legal clients to the schedule of stabilization outages.
“Business owners can now find out about possible blackouts by simply writing their business address in the search box on the site. This will allow them to plan their business and prepare for a possible blackout,” the company said on Facebook on Wednesday.
It is clarified that almost 10 thousand addresses of legal clients have been added to the schedule of potential outages, which are located in buildings that have a separate address from an apartment building and were not previously included in the stabilization outages database.
In addition, it is noted that the company continues to expand the address base in the charts. “If your address is not on the schedule, but there is no light, please let us know via the feedback form on the website of DTEK Kyiv Electric Grids. We will definitely check everything and add your business address to the schedule if necessary,” the company explained.
The Arber chain of clothing stores has opened its first store abroad, in Georgia, the network’s press service said.
“Now we demonstrate style and quality of Ukrainian production in Georgia. Arber has won the hearts of more than a million domestic customers and now we are entering a new level,” – stated on the official Facebook page of the company.
It is specified that the area of the store in East Point Shopping Center in Tbilisi is 176 square meters.
Arber Fashion Group – vertically integrated Ukrainian holding for clothing and accessories. It is represented by a retail network of more than 90 stores in all regions of Ukraine under the Arber, F’91 and “Kokon” brands.
The AFG production complex is represented by seven in-house factories for the production of men’s and women’s clothing, capable of producing more than 2 million units annually.
In Ukraine, due to problems with energy supply caused by shelling of energy facilities and infrastructure, a significant increase in demand for autonomous solar stations, both domestic and industrial, is recorded, Artem Semenyshyn, executive director of the Solar Energy Association of Ukraine, said.
“According to the results of our analysis based on data from the main suppliers and distributors of equipment, for domestic SPPs, demand for autonomous stations increased approximately 10 times, for industrial ones – 4-5 times,” he said, answering questions from a journalist from the Energy Reform Internet portal during a thematic online seminar in Kyiv on Wednesday.
At the same time, he noted that traditionally demand for grid inverters, which make it possible to supply electricity to the grid at a feed-in tariff, significantly prevailed over the demand for autonomous ones, providing personal power consumption.
At the same time, according to him, due to a sharp increase in demand in Ukraine, there is a shortage of the necessary equipment.
“There is not even enough equipment available. Here we compete for consignments of equipment with Europe, where the demand for solar power plants is also growing,” Semenyshyn said, expressing the hope that the situation with such equipment will improve in the coming months.
At the same time, he drew attention to the need to stimulate the development of small solar generation for personal consumption, given the situation with energy supply in the country.
At the same time, he pointed out that an autonomous solar power plant of the appropriate capacity has several advantages over diesel generators.
“For example, a battery has a response time of milliseconds, while a generator needs 1-3 seconds. In the case of a hospital, in particular, the switching speed is important in order to maintain certain settings of medical equipment. In addition, large generators consume a huge amount of expensive fuel, and the solar power plant battery can also be charged from the grid when there is electricity,” Semenyshyn explained.
Ukreximbank board member Alexander Ignatenko is cooperating with the investigation into the Ukrgazbank case, where he served as a board member until March 2020, which is being conducted by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecution Service (SAP), and is taking all legal methods to prove his innocence, Ukreximbank said in a statement.
“Ukreximbank reports that the case currently being investigated by the NABU and the SAP is not related to the current activities of Ukreximbank. Ukreximbank has no information pointing to the illegal actions of a member of the bank’s board,” the financial institution said in a release on its website.
According to it, Ignatenko has been in Kyiv since the date the case went to court and has been performing his official duties as a board member of Ukreximbank, “contributing to supporting the defense capability of the state, its energy and food security.”
“Ukreximbank is interested in the full and impartial performance of the anti-corruption bodies of Ukraine assigned tasks to protect the interests of the state in the fight against corruption and is open to cooperation with investigative authorities,” – noted in the statement.
As reported, on October 31, the Supreme Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine selected a preventive measure in the form of bail of about 40 million UAH in connection with the investigation into the infliction of more than 200 million UAH of losses to Ukrgazbank.
In addition, the suspect must come to the detective, prosecutor and the court at the first request, to report the change of residence and work, to refrain from communicating with other suspects in the case and witnesses, to deposit a foreign passport.
As reported, anti-corruption bodies of Ukraine in early October reported on the exposure of illegal activities of officials of the state Ukrgazbank and the suspicion of the 5 main figures in this crime, including the former head of Ukrgazbank and resigned from the post of the National Bank of Ukraine Kyrylo Shevchenko.
According to the prosecutor’s office, it was established that the bank’s management, possessing information about banking service contracts concluded with large customers, used it to steal money.
“For this purpose, bank officials ensured the conclusion of fictitious contracts with individuals and legal entities, which allegedly being “agents” of the bank attracted large customers to it. For such “agent services” the bank illegally paid monthly “remuneration” to these persons,” – explained in the SAP.
The investigation found that during 2014-2020 under this scheme, 52 fictitious agents were groundlessly transferred money of the state bank in the amount of more than 206 million UAH.
Then, on 23 October, the NABU put former NBU head Shevchenko, deputy board chairman of Ukrgazbank Denys Chernyshov and deputy director of the corporate VIP client department Olena Khmelenko on the wanted list.
