SkyUp airline will launch regular flights from Kyiv to Tbilisi (Georgia) from December 27 this year, to Sofia (Bulgaria) from December 28, to Poprad (Slovakia) and Barcelona (Spain) from December 29.
“The first good news from SkyUp,” Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan said on Facebook.
Tickets for flights to Tbilisi, Poprad and Barcelona in the booking system on the airline’s website are available until the end of March 2019, and to Sofia only until mid-January.
Flights to Tbilisi will be performed on Thursdays and Sundays (the minimum cost is from UAH 1,508), to the Tatras on Sundays and partially Thursdays (from UAH 954), to Barcelona on Wednesdays and Saturdays (from UAH 1,508), and to Sofia on Fridays (from UAH 1,329).
SkyUp Airline LLC was registered in Kyiv in June 2016. The founder of SkyUp was ACS-Ukraine LLC belonging to Tetiana Alba and Yuriy Alba, who also own JoinUp! tour operator.
The company began charter flights from the end of May 2018.
From mid-September, USPA FRUIT started shipping Ukrainian Royal Gala and Golden apples of the 2018 harvest to the countries of the Persian Gulf, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.
Considering the first large-scale campaign of exporting apples from Ukraine by sea, USPA FRUIT paid special attention to the quality of exported apples. So, all the apples passed control during harvesting, post-harvest application and applying special regyme of cooling for long term storage. The firmness of all the apples that are exported is at least 7 kg / cm2, which is sufficient for successful transportation and subsequent sale to the final consumer.
USPA FRUIT quality auditors checked each unit of apple packaging, which is especially important for deliveries to the countries of the Persian Gulf and Asia, in order to ensure the weight of each package according to the standard of 18 kg per box, net weight.
Ukrainian apples are valued by new consumers for the special taste and aroma that is provided by the special climate and black soil of Ukraine, which makes it possible to grow an apple using considerably less chemical treatments. Significant differences during twenty-four hours temperatures, which depends on the region but often excceed 20 ° C between day and night, make it possible to obtain an intensive red color in a natural way, which is in most cases 70% +, and thanks to long day and total amount of temperatures also to make an apple very sweet without the use of special chemicals. Such apples are selected by USPA FRUIT for the most demanding of their customers.
The main export of apples from Ukraine, traditionally, was carried out by road, so the USPA FRUIT company was especially attentive to meeting the schedule for delivering ships to the port and building a port logistics system, since the company exports all apples under CIF conditions in order to provide maximum service to its customers, guaranteeing the quality of apples at the port of destination and delivery in time.
Starting from October 10, Ukrainian apples began to arrive to the ports of the Persian Gulf and to the shelves of the largest retail chains. Quality control of apples, ensuring their quality packaging and the conditions of their delivery during transportation, made it possible to completely avoid customer complaints about the quality and packaging of apples, and the demanding Arab consumer fully appreciate the unique taste and aroma of Ukrainian apples, that means the export must go on.
Farvater Travel (Yuzhgorod) has launched the online package trip search and booking service, investing around $300,000 since the beginning of its creation, the co-founder of the company, Tetiana Pollak, told reporters during the presentation of the service in Kyiv. The service is based on the Online Travel Agency model and allows you to select the appropriate tour package from the list of parameters on the site among 29 million current offers of tour operators. “We the online service have not yet seen a payback. We need to grow another five times to become profit-making,” she said, adding that the company had already increased online sales five times in six months.
According to her, this year, with the help of this service, more than 1,000 tours with the cost from EUR 180 to EUR 4,100 (the average cost of one trip is EUR 1,170) were booked.
The company plans to increase the volume of the serviced part of the Ukrainian market of package tours from the current almost 1% to 7% in 2020.
The company sees the profit from the service according to the scheme, which is traditional for travel agencies – the fee from the price stated by the tour operator, Pollak said. “The company has been in the non-online market for a long time, it has a significant amount of sales, and because of this, we have the largest fee,” Farvater Travel CEO Andriy Shvets said. Travel Company Farvater has been operating since 2006. The first version of the online search site was launched in October 2017, and in December, the first customers appeared. The company is owned by Tetiana and Friedrich Pollak in equal shares. The charter capital Farvater Travel is UAH 20,000.
FARVATER TRAVEL, INVESTS, ONLINE, SEARCH, SERVICE, TRIP, YUZHGOROD
Agrochemical company Grossdorf (Cherkasy) will open a plant for the production of liquid carbomide-ammonium fertilizers near Khmilnyk (Vinnytsia region) with a capacity of 70,000 tonnes per year and a storage capacity of 3,000 tonnes in the middle of December, the press service of the company has said. “We’ve found a site that suited us, and prepared it properly. Currently, work is underway to manufacture equipment for the plant, then it will be tested at the main production facility, transported to Khmilnyk and installed. These works will take approximately one and a half or two months. Thus, the production will be launched by the end of 2018, and agricultural producers of this region will be provided with carbomide-ammonium fertilizers in the spring season of 2019,” Grossdorf Commercial Director Serhiy Ruban said.
He noted that by the end of the year Grossdorf’s production capacity will reach 480,000 tonnes.
The company said over the past year its strategy has changed somewhat. If earlier focus was made on rail transportation, now the company plans to build factories in the main regions where there is a significant need for fertilizers. This is the third plant that Grossdorf group will launch this year.
Grossdorf agrochemical company was established in 2016. It is engaged in production, import, transportation of fertilizers, as well as providing services for introduction of anhydrous ammonia. Its core business is the supply of basic fertilizers for precision farming.
FERTILIZERS, GROSSDORF, LIQUID CARBOMIDE-AMMONIUM, PLANT, PRODUCTION
AXA Group (France) has announced the sale of 100% of AXA Insurance and AXA Life Insurance to Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited (Fairfax, Canada), the group said in a press release. According to the report, 50% of AXA Insurance belongs to UkrSibbank. Fairfax, headquartered in Toronto (Canada), is a financial services holding company that through a network of its own companies provides investment management, property and liability insurance, and reinsurance. In February 2015, Fairfax announced the purchase of 100% in QBE Ukraine insurance company, later renaming the company as Colonnade Ukraine.
Fairfax as of the end of 2017 owned 28.06% of Astarta Holding N.V. (the Netherlands), the holding company of Astarta agro-industrial holding.
AXA Insurance (Kyiv) is the leading insurance company in Ukraine. For the first half of 2018 it collected more than UAH 915.6 million of gross insurance premiums, which is 14% more than in the same period of 2017. The total amount of insurance payments for this period amounted to UAH 455 million, which is 17% more than in 2017.
AXA Insurance belongs to AXA Group (France), represented in the Ukrainian insurance market since 2007. The company has more than 780 employees and 1,220 agents throughout Ukraine. AXA Life Insurance was registered in July 2013.
Ukraine in January-September 2018 exported fruits and berries in the amount of $157 million, which is 40% more compared to the same period last year. According to the Ukrsadprom association, the main products in this group were walnuts, which were delivered for $69 million, frozen fruits and berries worth $61 million, apples and pears for $10 million.
“The growth in exports of walnuts (from 13,000 tonnes in the first nine months of 2017 to 20,000 tonnes in the same period of the current year), apples and pears (from 9,000 tonnes to 29,000 tonnes respectively) was the most notable in natural terms,” according to the website of the association.
The main sales market remained the European Union, supplies to which bring about two-thirds of all foreign exchange earnings. In January-September 2018 the largest purchases of fruits were made by Poland ($32.3 million), France ($11.7 million), Belarus ($10.9 million), Turkey ($10.6 million), the Netherlands ($8.8 million), Germany ($7.4 million), and Italy ($7.2 million).
“If not to take into account imports of exotic fruits to Ukraine (mainly citrus fruits and bananas), for the three quarters of 2018 the surplus of foreign trade in fruits and berries reached $75 million,” the association said.
Ukrainian apples are exported to more than 50 countries, while they are mainly purchased by Belarus (43%), Moldova (20%), and Sweden (10%).
