The Agrofusion Group, a large tomato paste and industrial tomato producer in Ukraine, plans to plant and process 630,000 tonnes of tomatoes in 2018, including 9,900 tonnes of organic tomatoes. According to a posting on the group’s website, in 2017, it started producing organic tomato paste. “Last week all growing divisions of Agrofusion has begun tomato seedling transplanting. Favorable weather conditions and timely field preparation allowed to start the transplanting according to the schedule. Transplanting will continue till the end of May,” the company said.
Agrofusion Group, founded in 2007, belongs to businessman Serhiy Sypko. Agrofusion includes three tomato paste production plants with the processing capacity of about 7500,000 tonnes of tomatoes per season, as well as farms in Kherson and Mykolaiv regions, processing 25,000 hectares of irrigated land, and two greenhouse farms.
The Sikorsky Kyiv international airport intends to expand Terminal A for servicing growing passenger flow, Board Chairman Denys Kostrzhevsky has said. “In the coming years we predict growth of passenger flow and the new large-scale reconstruction being conducted by Master-Avia (the company that manages the airport) is linked to this. In 2019, the airports arrival and departure capacities would be doubled,” he said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine. He said that at present, the international flight arrival zone has been re-equipped and expanded, and in the middle of May 2018 the large-scale reconstruction of Terminal A will start at the airport.
“Previously, the airport used Terminal D only for servicing domestic flights. Unfortunately, the domestic passenger traffic decreased significantly. IT practically came to nil. It was decided to re-equip a part of the facilities for servicing the arriving passengers from international flights. I cannot name the exact cost of reconstruction, as we are in the process. This is about UAH 20 million,” Kostrzhevsky said.
He added that two galleries have already been built that joined Terminals D and A. The number of passport control posts doubled, the area for staying passengers has been expanded significantly. The number of luggage delivery belts was doubled.
“It is planned to add more areas, about 9,000 square meters, to Terminal A, which will double the number of check-in counters, to 40. Also, the number of passport control desks, security checkpoints will be doubled, and, as a result, the number of passengers served simultaneously will grow 2.5-fold. Now it is about 700 passengers per hour, and there are plans to bring it up to 1,500,” Kostrzhevsky said.
The Board of the World Bank has approved the provision of a long-term loan of $12.5 million to Nyva Pereyaslavschyny, the largest group of pig companies in Ukraine. According to a posting on the website of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the decision was made on April 25, 2018. The funds will be sent to finance the company’s 2018-2019 capital expansion program. The total cost of the project is $35 million.
As reported, at the end of April 2015 the IFC issued $25 million loans to Nyva Pereyaslavschyny to support the plans of the group to expand operations and refinance medium-term debt.
The Nyva Pereyaslavschyny group of companies cultivates about 23,000 hectares of land. Its grain storage capacity is about 150,000 tonnes, the annual export of grains is 100,000 tonnes. The group includes nine pig breeding complexes. The work to collect permits for the construction of the tenth farm has been started. The group plans in 2018 to build a new specialized meat processing plant with a capacity of 240 animals per hour.
Ukraine’s international reserves grew by 1.3% in April 2018 and amounted to $18.421 billion as of May 1, 2018, according to tentative data published on the website of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU). According to the NBU, the main source of replenishment of reserves, as in the previous months, was the purchase of foreign currency in the interbank market.
“The prolonged excess of the supply of foreign currency over demand in the interbank market allowed the NBU to continue buying out surplus foreign currency to build up reserves, while not counteracting the strengthening of the hryvnia exchange rate,” the central bank said.
The NBU bought $326.7 million in the interbank market in April, including $146 million during interventions at the best rate, $80 million at a single rate, and $100.7 million at foreign currency auctions.
The NBU recalled that in the second quarter of 2018, it intends to buy $10 million daily on the interbank foreign exchange market to replenish Ukraine’s international reserves.
In addition, the central bank last month sold $24 million during interventions in the form of request for a better exchange rate. Thus, the net purchase of foreign currency amounted to $302.7 million.
The level of reserves was also positively influenced by the placement of government domestic loan bonds denominated in foreign currency for a total of EUR 83.6 million.
The expenditure of international reserves in April was mainly related to government payments for servicing and repayment of public and publicly guaranteed debt in foreign currency.
“The amount of payments in April was $127.4 million, including $30.8 million for servicing government domestic loan bonds denominated in foreign currency,” the NBU said.
In addition, the amount of reserves was influenced by the revaluation of financial instruments (change in market value, the hryvnia exchange rate against foreign currencies) for $59.2 million and other transactions for $11.3 million.
In general, as of May 1, 2018, the volume of international reserves covers 3.3 months of future imports and is sufficient to fulfill Ukraine’s obligations and current operations of the government and the central bank.
The Ukrainian Sea Port Authority has announced an open tender to select a contractor to conduct dredging works in the internal water area of Odesa Maritime Merchandise Port, the authority has said in a report. It is planned that dredging will be conducted in 2018-2019. Over 91,000 cubic meters of soil is to be removed. The expect cost of works is UAH 19.03 million. “We conducted dredging works at Odesa seaport last year using own fleet, and this year we will attract a contractor, as the authority’s fleet is used at other sections, in particular, works in Danube and Azov regions,” Ukrainian Sea Port Authority Head Ravis Veckagans said.
Bids can be submitted both by Ukrainian and international companies before June 4, 2018.
National Nuclear Generating Company Energoatom has signed a contract with Orano (earlier Areva, France) to assess the possibility of the practical implementation of services to reprocess spent nuclear fuel assemblies from Ukrainian reactors of VVER-1000 type at the French La Hague Reprocessing Plant. “This contract marks an important step for Orano. It is a real success for us. It will pave a way for treating Ukrainian spent nuclear fuel by the French reprocessing sector,” the press service of Energoatom reported, citing Senior Executive Vice President of Orano’s Recycling Business Unit Pascal Aubret.
Energoatom said that after producing electricity in a power reactor, the spent fuel contains 96% of recyclable materials and 4% of final waste. The process implemented at Orano’s La Hague plant separates the reusable materials, which will once again be used to produce energy, from the final waste which undergoes safe and stable conditioning and packaging.
According to an announcement of Energoatom in the ProZorro e-procurement system, the cost of the contract signed with Orano Cycle is EUR 1.395 million. The company is to finish the study before December 31, 2020.
At present, Energoatom sends spent nuclear fuel for reprocessing to the Russian Federation. At the same time, there is the problem of handling VVER-1000 spent fuel from Westinghouse. So, while carrying out research on the possibility of processing Westinghouse spent nuclear fuel, information about the design of fuel assemblies is used. Westinghouse agreed to provide relevant information only to Areva.
