The Ukrainian metallurgical industry continues to show positive recovery dynamics after a sharp decline due to the full-scale war. At the end of 2025, companies increased their total rolled steel production by 4.8% to 6.521 million tons, compared to 6.222 million tons in the previous year. This marks the second consecutive year of growth after a sharp decline in 2022.
However, statistics for 2025 revealed an ambiguous trend: with an increase in the output of finished rolled products, steel production for the year decreased slightly by 2.2% to 7.409 million tons. Such indicators may indicate the use of imported billets or strategic reserves of raw materials by enterprises. In December 2025, rolled steel production amounted to 554,400 tons, and steel production amounted to 596,700 tons.
Overall, the steel industry is showing resilience and potential for further recovery. Over two years (2024-2025), rolled steel production grew by more than 21% overall, and steel production by 19%. However, production volumes are still significantly lower than pre-war levels: in 2021, Ukraine produced over 21 million tons of steel and 19 million tons of rolled steel, which is three times higher than current figures.
Five sugar factories belonging to the Astarta agro-industrial holding, Ukraine’s largest sugar producer, produced 361,000 tons of sugar during the 2025 sugar season, which is 5% less than in 2024 (380,000 tons), the agro-industrial holding’s press service reported on Facebook on Friday.
According to the information, sugar yield was 15.56% compared to 14.96% a year earlier and exceeded the average in Ukraine, which, according to the National Association of Sugar Producers of Ukraine (NASU) as of January 1, 2026, was 15.19%.
In total, the enterprises processed more than 2.3 million tons of sugar beets grown in the fields of the agricultural holding and in partnership with agricultural producers.
“The season was marked by high product quality that meets the most stringent market requirements,” the agricultural holding said.
It specified that this sugar processing season was the 26th in the company’s history and the 168th for the Zhdanivsky sugar factory within the holding’s structure.
Astarta is a vertically integrated agro-industrial holding operating in eight regions of Ukraine. It includes six sugar factories, agricultural enterprises with a land bank of 220,000 hectares, dairy farms with 22,000 head of cattle, an oil extraction plant in Hlobine (Poltava region), seven elevators, and a biogas complex.
In January-September 2025, Astarta reduced its net profit by 42.2% to EUR43.70 million, and its consolidated revenue decreased by 22.4% to EUR342.78 million.
In 2025, Kametstal Plant, part of Metinvest Mining and Metallurgical Group (Kamensk, Dnipropetrovsk region), carried out a series of important equipment repairs and expanded its product range by seven items.
According to the company, in 2025, despite the obstacles posed by the war, the company continued to operate, develop and support the economic strength of the region and Ukraine.
Thus, despite logistical difficulties and energy instability, Kametstal implemented the most ambitious capital repair programme of the war years, the most important of which were the overhaul of blast furnace No. 9, a complex of overhauls of the main equipment of both converters, the installation of furnace ladle No. 1, MBLZ-1, and major repairs of the section rolling and pipe mill.
It is noted that Kametstal expanded its product range by seven items and once again became the leader among Metinvest’s enterprises. The plant was the first among the group’s enterprises to commission a gas piston power plant to generate its own electricity. This made it possible to increase the energy security of the main production equipment during wartime.
In the converter shop, continuous casting machine (CCM) No. 1 was reconstructed: important electrical equipment, automated control systems, and key equipment of the machine’s drawing and straightening devices were upgraded in two stages. The electrical equipment of CCM No. 2 was also modernised.
In addition, the construction of new above-ground high- and medium-pressure water pipes to support the technological processes of the converter and lime-burning shops in particular was completed and put into operation.
In 2025, the company invested almost UAH 43 million in improving working conditions at the enterprise.
Kametstal is part of the Metinvest Group.
Prices for construction and installation works in Ukraine rose by 5.4% in November 2025 compared to November 2024, according to the State Statistics Service (SSS).
According to the statistics agency, during the period in question, prices rose in all segments of construction compared to November 2024: in residential construction by 5.8% (0.4% compared to October), in non-residential construction by 5.9% (0.9%), and in engineering construction by 4.9% (0.6%).
Overall, in the first 11 months of 2025, prices for construction and installation works increased by 5.8%, with a 6.4% increase in residential construction, a 6% increase in non-residential construction, and a 5.4% increase in engineering construction.
As reported, in 2024, prices for construction and installation works increased by 7.9% compared to the previous year, and in 2023, they grew by 15.8% compared to 2022.
Consumer price growth in Ukraine slowed to 0.2% in December 2025 from 0.4% in November and 0.9% in October, the State Statistics Service (SSS) reported on Friday.
The statistics agency recalled that in December 2024, consumer price growth was 1.4%, so in annual terms, inflation at the end of December this year decreased to 8% from 9.3% at the end of November and 10.9% at the end of October, and was lower than inflation in 2024, which was 12%.
It is noted that in December 2025, core inflation also fell to 0.1% from 0.3% in November and 0.6% in October. Given that in December 2024 it was 1.3%, core inflation slowed down to 8% in annual terms at the end of the year, from 9.3% in November and 10.2% in October.
In the consumer market in December, prices for food and non-alcoholic beverages remained largely unchanged. At the same time, prices for eggs, grain products, fish and fish products, bread, sunflower oil, lard, vegetables, beef, and milk rose by 5.6–0.7%. At the same time, prices for fruit, sugar, poultry, pork, rice, fermented milk products, non-alcoholic beverages, and butter fell by 4.1–0.2%.
Prices for alcoholic beverages and tobacco products rose by 1.0%, which is associated with a 1.9% increase in the cost of tobacco products.
Clothing and footwear fell in price by 3.9%, in particular, footwear by 4.4% and clothing by 3.6%.
Transport prices rose by 0.7%, mainly due to a 1.3% increase in the cost of passenger rail transport and a 1.1% increase in the cost of fuel and lubricants.
As reported, inflation in Ukraine, which fell to 5.1% in 2023 after jumping to 26.6% a year ago, rose to 12% at the end of 2024.
At the end of October, the National Bank of Ukraine improved its inflation forecast for 2025 to 9.2% from 9.7% in its July macro forecast and left its inflation estimate for 2026 at the previous level of 6.6%.
Twelve publishers have been fined a total of UAH 1.896 million for violating the terms of delivery of textbooks to general secondary education institutions in 2025, according to the Institute for the Modernisation of Education Content of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine.
According to the Institute’s response to a request from the agency ‘Interfax-Ukraine’, twelve publishers violated the deadlines for delivering textbooks to general secondary education institutions in 2025.
In this regard, these publishers have been fined for violating the terms of the contract, in particular: Abetka LLC must pay a fine of 15,063 hryvnias; Alaton Publishing House LLC – 323,987 hryvnias; Aston LLC – UAH 142,505; Atlant Publishing House LLC – UAH 140; Bukrek MPP – UAH 2,189; Genesis LLC – UAH 684,832; TO ‘Gymnasium’ LLC – 141,936 UAH; ‘Methodika Publishing’ LLC – 528 UAH; ‘Educational Book – Bohdan’ Publishing House LLC – 7,202 UAH; ‘UOVC ’ORION” LLC – 561,157 UAH; Rannok Publishing House LLC – 4,916 UAH; Shkolyar Educational and Publishing Centre LLC – 12,455 UAH.
As reported, on 5 September 2025, the Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine, Oksen Lisovyi, stated that all planned textbooks would be accepted by schools by 15 September. However, as of 15 September, more than 10% of the planned textbooks had still not been delivered to schools.
On 18 September 2025, the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Education, Science and Innovation, as in the previous year, recognised the work of the Ministry of Education in providing schools with textbooks as unsatisfactory and acknowledged that the new mechanism for delivering textbooks needed urgent refinement.
On 25 September 2025, Deputy Minister of Education and Science Nadiya Kuzmychova announced that publishers who failed to deliver textbooks to schools on time would pay millions in penalties. She also expressed hope that the issue of textbook delivery would be resolved by the end of September.
On 14 November 2025, according to data from the dashboard of the Ministry of Education’s Institute of Educational Analytics, 100% of the planned textbooks had been delivered to schools.
At the end of December 2025, the Ministry of Education announced that in 2026 Ukraine would switch to a two-year cycle for the creation of textbooks and would continue to implement a model of delivering textbooks from publishers directly to schools.
