Chairman of the supervisory board of Louis Dreyfus Holding B.V. Margarita Louis-Dreyfus, who arrived in Kyiv at the head of the delegation of Louis Dreyfus Company, one of the largest foodstuff traders in the world, during a meeting with President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko announced the plan to increase investment in the Ukrainian economy.
“You believe [in Ukraine], invest and promote Ukraine in the world,” Poroshenko said at a meeting with the company’s delegation.
The president noted the 20-year activity of the company in Ukraine and expressed hope that it will increase investment in the country.
Poroshenko also informed the delegation members about the progress of reforms in Ukraine aimed at improving the investment climate.
Margarita Louis-Dreyfus, in turn, said that the company plans to significantly increase investment in Ukraine in the coming years. She also noted that over the past four years there have been positive changes in Ukraine that the company feels in its work.
Louis Dreyfus Company is one of the largest food traders in the world with 10% of the world turnover. The company operates in 100 countries. Its core business is trade, agriculture and finance.
The average term for booking rooms in hotels of the southern region of Ukraine after the summer 2018 season fell to four days from seven a year ago, Ribas Hotels Group Executive Director Andriy Marenchuk has told Interfax-Ukraine. “If we evaluate the overall [summer] season, we can say that it was not easy… The booking period in the southern region was significantly reduced, the early booking period also. The average booking duration for this season is four days, and last year it was seven day. This is one of the main factors for assessing the tourist market,” he said. According to Marenchuk, a decrease in this indicator indicates a low level of the marketing product of most resort hotels in the country.
He said that Karolino-Buhaz, Hrybivka, Ochakiv, Zatoka and Koblevo became resorts of the “last minute,” that is, they are chosen as the last resort if tourists could not go to a foreign resort. “This is the worst marketing product of the existing ones. It is bought last, because other factors did not play: for example, there was not enough time to go to Egypt or Turkey for 10 days, so we went to Zatoka for three days. Why there were queues at the Moldovan border on Thursdays and Fridays? People from Moldova went for a weekend. These are not tourists from Belarus or Ukrainian guests who came for five to seven days,” the expert said.
He also said that in the struggle for a guest who prefers to come to Ukraine for a long time, domestic resorts lose to foreign ones, primarily because of the lack of a developed hotel infrastructure. “If in Turkey a hotel is built on average with 300 rooms, then in our region such a facility is considered very large. And if a hotel has a small number of rooms, then it is unprofitable to build a pool, install water slides and other entertainment infrastructure,” the expert said.
At the same time, Marenchuk reported on increased competition with Carpathian hotels. “We have a rival with rapidly developing tourism like the Carpathians. The mountains are considered not only from the perspective of the winter resort Bukovel. Many Carpathian hotels have begun to use the summer season. Today only the sea saves us [the Ribas Hotels Group],” Marenchuk said.
In turn, the founder of the company Ribas Hotels Group, Artur Lupashko, said that the operator’s hotels showed a consistently high load this year. “Loading of our summer hotels this year has fluctuated at the level of 68%. Traditionally, the most active months [July and August] showed 76%. June sank a little at 58%. For owners or investors of the southern region, this means profitability of resort hotels of six to eight years and the return of 12-16%,” he said.
Ribas Hotels Group (Odesa) LLC was established in 2017. According to the unified public register, Lupashko is the head of the group and holder of a 100% stake in the company’s charter capital.
State-owned enterprise (SOE) Spetstechnoexport is boosting defense cooperation with India and opening its second representative office on the largest defense market of the South Asian region. The press service of the company reported on Tuesday that the representative office of Spetstechnoexport opened in October in Nashik, India, will provide operational and effective cooperation with Indian partners, including the implementation of the new arrangements in the defense cooperation sphere signed by Ukraine in 2018 with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL).
According to the report, the new arrangements with HAL foresee expansion of defense cooperation in the aviation cluster, in particular, the supply of defense systems for Indian helicopters, joint research and the developments, establishment of production of specific aviation systems in India.
Spetstechnoexport engages Ukrainian defense enterprises in cooperation with the HAL, in particular the Lviv State Aircraft Repair Plant, the Odesa Aviation Plant, SOE Institute for scientific research Storm, SOE Kharkiv Machine-Building Plant FED, the Kharkiv Aggregate Design Bureau, SOE Novator, Radionix LLC and others.
The possibility of closer communication with foreign partners allows increasing the volume of cooperation, the company said. This year, Spetstechnoexport has almost tripled the volume of supplies of defense products to the needs of the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited aircraft division compared to the level of 2016.
Spetstechnoexport has an opportunity to take part in tenders for joint modernization of radars P-18 and ST-68, as well as air defense systems, such as ZSU-23-4 Shilka, P-125 Pechora and others under new arrangements with BEL.
The press service said that during the DefExpo 2018 international defense exhibition in India, Spetstechnoexport signed new contracts in the aviation sector with the total cost of about $20 million.
State-owned enterprise (SOE) Ukrainian Sea Port Authority in January-October 2018 increased dredging works using own fleet by 13% year-over-year, to 1.3 million cubic meters (mcm). “However, the volume of works to be carried out is larger. Only in 2018 we announced tender to select subcontractors in the ProZorro e-procurement system under seven projects with a total volume of over 5.5 mcm,” the press service of the authority reported.
The Ukrainian Sea Port Authority plans to double dredging works at Ukrainian ports in 2019, bringing the volume of projects to 16.335 million cubic meters.
The Ukrainian Sea Port Authority is a SOE that oversees the operation of 13 seaports on the territory of Ukraine. Founded in 2013, it owns strategic facilities for port infrastructure, which include seaport areas, hydraulic structures, berths and public infrastructure such as approach roads and utility networks.
The SOE provides for the functioning of seaports, charges port dues and provides general maintenance services. Each port has a branch of the authority, which acts as the administration of the port. 80% of the authority’s revenue is denominated in U.S. dollars, whereas in expenditures the hryvnia component dominates.
Chateau Chizay winemaking company LLC (Berehove, Zakarpattia region) in 2019 would boost wine sales by 15% compared with 2018, to 1.38 million bottles.
“In 2019, we intend to sell about 1.38 million bottles, despite the fact that the plans for 2018 are to sell about 1.2 million bottles,” Director of the company Anatoliy Poloskov told Interfax-Ukraine.
In 2017, the wine company grew and processed 1,500 tonnes of grapes, in 2018 it reached almost 2,000 tonnes. Due to the good yield, the company plans to sell some wine materials this year.
“Earlier, we didn’t have our own vineyards. We bought grapes in Odesa, Mykolaiv, Kherson, and Crimea, and produced and bottled 7-10 million bottles a year. Now we make wine exclusively from our own grapes, therefore, we have enough capacity,” Poloskov said.
At the same time, he said that Chateau Chizay faces with logistical difficulties due to the fact that the company’s two plants are located 25 km far from each other.
According to him, Chateau Chizay has 272 hectares under vineyards in three districts of Zakarpattia region.
He said that now the wine company is working on obtaining a land parcel.
Poloskov said that the company is mulling the possibility of resuming production of sparkling wine.
He said that 15% of wine is exported. The key markets are the United States, Canada, Australia and Israel.
“Today we are present on many continents. We also sent wine to Nigeria, but we don’t cooperate with the EU. Nobody is waiting for us there. I am talking about Ukrainian wines in general. Nobody wants us to bite off from their wine-making pie. And yet we now hope for Poland, we are actively working with it. We are mastering Asia, but so far there have not yet been supplies there. Also Sweden has become interested in our wine,” Poloskov said.
One troy ounce=31.10 grams
