The German company Knauf will build a plant for the production of drywall and dry building mixtures in Borshchiv (Ternopil region), with investments in the project amounting to EUR 150 million, said Dmytro Kysylevskyi, deputy chairman of the parliamentary committee on economic development.
According to him, the design capacity of the new plant will be 30 million square meters of drywall and 320 thousand tons of dry mixes.
“This will be the second Knauf plant in Ukraine. The first one is located in Kyiv and is currently operating at full capacity – about 25 million square meters of drywall and 200 thousand tons of dry mixes. This is enough to meet the domestic demand of the Ukrainian market, but after the war, the demand will increase significantly. That is why the new plant in Borshchiv is an investment with faith in victory,” Kysylevsky wrote on his Facebook page.
Previously, Knauf also owned a plant in Soledar (Donetsk region), which was destroyed by the occupiers. The company took its employees out and employed them at the Kyiv plant, which employs 425 people in total, the MP said.
Kysylevsky noted that Knauf has officially announced that it has stopped investing and is leaving the Russian market. At the same time, in 2023, the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (NAPC) included Knauf in the now canceled list of international sponsors of war because of its continued operations in Russia.
“According to my information, they have finally left Russia. And all international companies that have not yet done so should do the same. The best way to improve your reputation after a long withdrawal from Russia is to build factories in Ukraine,” the MP emphasized.
Knauf is a leading global manufacturer of gypsum and building materials.
According to Opendatabot, by the end of 2023, Knauf’s Kyiv plant (Knauf Gypsum Kyiv LLC) increased its net revenue by 65% to UAH 3.53 billion, and its net profit by 2.6 times to UAH 1 billion.
