Turkish chain English Home, which sells home goods and decor, is ending its operations in Ukraine and beginning the process of transferring its retail spaces to a local franchise partner. The reasons for this are a decline in the number of customers, falling sales, and high rental costs, according to NV Business.
According to the publication, the chain’s main target audience was women aged 20-40 with children, and with the start of the war, a significant part of this group left the country, which led to a decline in demand. At the same time, the operating company in Ukraine, EHM Ukraine LLC, managed to show revenue of UAH 281.6 million in 2024, which is 4.1% less than in 2023. At the same time, the annual loss reached UAH 43.1 million, which is 47.5% more than in the previous year.
One factor complicating business operations is that the British brand’s stores are located primarily in premium shopping centers, where rental rates remain high and are not offset by the decline in customer traffic. As noted by Yavuz Bekar, Director of International Sales at English Home, “our business operations in Ukraine were not profitable.”
English Home was founded in Turkey in 2008 and is managed by Turgut Aydın Holding. The brand offers collections of British-style home textiles and decor in pastel and muted shades. As of October 2020, there were 33 retail outlets in Ukraine.
Vodafone Group and Ukraine’s second-largest mobile operator, VF Ukraine (Vodafone Ukraine, VFU), will begin construction of a new high-speed submarine cable system in the Black Sea, creating a digital corridor between Europe and Asia, according to a company release on Monday.
It is noted that the Kardesa submarine fiber-optic communication network will connect Ukraine, Bulgaria, Georgia, and Turkey. The first cable landing is planned in Bulgaria in 2027, followed by Turkey, Georgia, and Ukraine.
In a Telegram channel, First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov specified that the project budget is over EUR100 million.
The mobile operator added that the general contractor for the project will be Xtera, a company that implements high-performance turnkey underwater telecom solutions and builds and commissions advanced underwater cable systems in more than 60 countries around the world.
“One of the key points of our Strategy for the Development of Electronic Communications until 2030 is to build more international Internet highways to create a sustainable Internet in Ukraine,” Fedorov emphasized.
According to him, thanks to this communication line, the Black Sea region will receive an additional 500 terabits/s of Internet bandwidth.
“Submarine cables provide 97-98% of international Internet traffic, so this project is important for the development of the digital ecosystem of the entire region,” Fedorov wrote.
The first deputy prime minister specified that the project will ensure digital sovereignty and the stability of telecommunications infrastructure, investments in the telecom sector, high-speed and secure internet for Ukrainians, and will also serve as a link in internet traffic between Europe and Asia, bypassing Russia.
As reported, Vodafone Ukraine reduced its net profit by 13% in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period last year, to UAH 1.705 billion, while its revenue grew by 15%, to UAH 13.518 billion.
In the first half of the year, the company increased its investments by 66% compared to the same period in 2024, investing more than UAH 3.5 billion in critical infrastructure, and in total, over 3.5 years of full-scale war, investments in Ukraine reached almost UAH 19 billion. In the structure of investments in the first half of this year, 51% is accounted for by the construction and restoration of the network, as well as its preparation for operation during blackouts, 31% – network maintenance, 11% – fixed communications development, and 4% – the billing exchange program.
Vodafone Ukraine has been part of NEQSOL Holding since December 2019.
Ukrnafta JSC paid UAH 22.5 billion in taxes and UAH 5 billion in dividends to the state in January-September 2025, the company said on Monday, citing acting chairman of the board Yuriy Tkachuk.
“Thank you to the entire 20,000-strong team at Ukrnafta – the people who ensure stable production, network development, scientific research, and innovation even in the most difficult conditions,” he said.
Ukrnafta JSC is Ukraine’s largest oil producer and operator of the largest national network of gas stations, UKRNAFTA. In 2024, the company entered into an asset management agreement with Glusco. In 2025, it completed a deal with Shell Overseas Investments BV to purchase the Shell network in Ukraine. In total, it operates 663 gas stations.
The company is implementing a comprehensive program to restore operations and update the format of its network of gas stations. Since February 2023, it has been issuing its own fuel vouchers and NAFTA cards, which are sold to legal entities and individuals through Ukrnafta-Postach LLC.
The largest shareholder of Ukrnafta is Naftogaz of Ukraine with a 50%+1 share. In November 2022, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine decided to transfer to the state the corporate rights of the company that belonged to private owners and is now managed by the Ministry of Defense.
PrivatBank, Ukraine’s largest state-owned bank, increased its corporate loan portfolio by UAH 15.15 billion, or 44.5%, to UAH 49.23 billion in the first nine months of 2025 and plans to continue to grow aggressively and compete in all market segments, said Yevgen Zaigraev, member of the PrivatBank board for corporate business and SMEs.
“We already exceeded our annual plan in September… We are now making plans for the coming years and are also setting fairly aggressive growth rates — higher than the expected market growth rates — because we want to increase our market share in lending,” he said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
According to data from the National Bank of Ukraine, the corporate loan portfolio of the entire banking system of the country grew by 15.1%, or UAH 123.79 billion, to UAH 943.32 billion in the first nine months of this year.
As Zaigraev specified, growth in the microbusiness segment amounted to 18.2%, or UAH 2.57 billion, to UAH 16.71 billion, and in the small business segment, 35.6%, or UAH 3.91 billion, to UAH 14.89 billion.
According to his data, in the medium business segment, over the first nine months of this year, the corporate loan portfolio increased by 44.1%, or UAH 2.26 billion, to UAH 7.38 billion, and in the large corporate business segment, which PrivatBank entered only last year, growth was 2.7 times, or UAH 6.41 billion, to UAH 10.25 billion.
“Growth is higher in large corporate business because the base there was smaller. But in any case, even in micro, small, and medium-sized businesses, we are growing twice as fast as the market today,” commented a member of PrivatBank’s board. According to him, the quality of the loan portfolio is almost perfect thanks to the established risk management procedures: NPL currently stands at approximately 1.5% (excluding the debts of former owners) with a 3-5-fold increase over several years.
He noted that PrivatBank has the capacity to satisfy each of these four segments and will compete in each of them.
“Each of these four segments is an absolute priority for PrivatBank. In each of these segments, we want to grow as much as the market allows,” Zaigraev emphasized.
He recalled that historically, PrivatBank has been more active in the micro and small business segment, so it has a fairly significant market share in these two segments: approximately 40-50% of customers in Ukraine have active accounts with PrivatBank and its services, and about 20% have loans with PrivatBank.
As for the other two segments, according to the board member, after nationalization, the bank began to develop this area only a few years ago, so the share of customers who have active accounts with it is smaller, but it is also quite significant—35-40% of all customers throughout Ukraine.
“However, for the most part, they also had and still have salary projects, acquiring, and foreign currency payments here. We want to provide them with all products and services, and therefore last year we began to actively develop lending and related products for such corporate clients… This means that the potential for growth is greater in the large corporate client segment,” the banker noted.
He recalled that PrivatBank has a total of 930-940 thousand active micro, small, and medium-sized business clients, while its closest competitor has 7-9 times fewer.
Zaigraev clarified that the bank mainly includes sole proprietorships in the microbusiness segment, but also legal entities with annual sales of up to UAH 30 million, small businesses are legal entities with annual sales of UAH 30 million to UAH 300 million, medium or medium corporate businesses are those with annual sales of UAH 300 million to UAH 1.5 billion, and then there are large corporate clients.
According to the NBU, PrivatBank’s total assets reached UAH 1.001 trillion as of September 1, 2025, or 25.6% of the total assets of the Ukrainian banking system.
The volume of cargo transported through the Ukrainian corridor increased to 150 million tons, and the number of ships that passed through it exceeded 6,000, according to Deputy Prime Minister for Recovery and Minister of Community and Territorial Development Oleksiy Kuleba.
Exactly two months earlier, the Ministry of Development reported on the results of the corridor’s operation over the two years since its opening: more than 137 million tons and over 5,300 ships, meaning that in the last two months, about 700 ships carrying approximately 13 million tons of cargo passed through the corridor.
According to previously published data from the ministry, in the second year of the corridor’s operation, the volume of cargo increased to approximately 72.6 million tons from 64.4 million tons in the first year, and the number of ships increased to more than 2,900 from 2,380. At the same time, the cargo of one ship decreased to approximately 24,900 tons from 27,100 tons in the first year of the corridor’s operation.
Thus, in the last two months, there has been a further decrease in cargo per ship, to approximately 18,600 tons, although the total number of ships has increased significantly compared to the average for the second year of the corridor’s operation, which has led to a slight increase in cargo turnover.
Kuleba also added that of the total cargo volume of 90 million tons, grain accounted for 90 million tons, while in the two years of the corridor’s operation, it was over 84 million tons, and in the first year, 43.5 million tons. Thus, over the past two months, the average monthly grain shipment rate is still lower than the average for both the second year of the corridor’s operation and the first year.
At the same time, the situation has improved compared to May-July. On May 12, Kuleba reported the transportation of 120 million tons of cargo through the Ukrainian Sea Corridor, including 76 million tons of grain. Thus, in the last three months of the second year of the corridor’s operation, monthly volumes amounted to less than 5.7 million tons, including less than 2.7 million tons of grain, while in the first two months of the third year, these figures increased to approximately 6.5 million tons and 3 million tons.
According to the minister, thanks to the maritime corridor, Ukrainian products and goods are delivered to 55 countries around the world, while at the end of the second year, the Ministry of Development reported 54 countries, and after the first year of the corridor’s operation, exports to 46 countries were reported.
Kuleba also said that today there are 30 stationary shelters operating in seaports, and 21 additional mobile protective structures have been installed in the ports of Greater Odessa. By the end of 2025, it is planned to equip another 28.
As of October 17, farmers harvested 34.749 million tons of grain and legumes from 7.979 million hectares, which is 69% of the area sown with these crops, according to the website of the Ministry of Economy, Environment, and Agriculture.
Last year, on the same date, 42.8 million tons of grain were harvested from 9.4 million hectares, meaning that this year’s figures are 18.8% and 15% lower, respectively, mainly due to the later start of corn harvesting.
As noted by the Ministry of Economy, 4.91 million tons of corn have been harvested from 895,200 hectares, while last year at around this date, 13.2 million tons were harvested from 2.4 million hectares.
As for wheat, its harvest is slightly higher than last year’s – 22.78 million tons from 5.05 million hectares compared to 22.30 million tons from 4.9 million hectares, while barley is slightly lower – 5.36 million tons from 1.35 million hectares compared to 5.50 million tons from 1.41 million hectares.
This year’s pea harvest is significantly higher – 658,300 tons from 271,100 hectares compared to 465,300 tons from 212,200 hectares last year, while buckwheat and millet are still significantly lower – 82.4 thousand tons versus 124.8 thousand tons and 59.9 thousand tons versus 158.9 thousand tons, respectively.
The harvest of other cereals and legumes this year reached 896,200 tons from 304,700 hectares as of October 17, while last year it amounted to 1 million tons on the same date.
It is noted that among the leaders are, in particular, the Odesa region – 3.78 million tons from an area of 1.13 million hectares, Poltava – 2.66 million tons from 564,200 hectares, Khmelnytskyi region – 2.48 million tons from 356,900 hectares, and Vinnytsia region – 2.45 million tons from 440,100 hectares.
The harvest of wheat, barley, and peas has been completed, according to the Ministry of Economy.
As for oilseeds, the rapeseed harvest is only slightly less than last year’s – 3.31 million tons compared to 3.5 million tons from almost equal areas of about 1.3 million hectares.
However, the harvest of soybeans and sunflowers is still ongoing, and there is a significant lag: 3.08 million tons of soybeans have been harvested from 1.34 million hectares, compared to 5.2 million tons from 2.3 million hectares on the same date last year, while sunflower seeds – 7.19 million tons from 3.91 million hectares compared to 9.3 million tons from 4.5 million hectares.
In addition, the harvest of sugar beets is also lagging behind: 4.72 million tons have been harvested from an area of 90,000 hectares, compared to 6.5 million tons on the same date last year.
According to the Ministry of Economy, sunflower has been harvested from 76% of the sown area, soybeans from 62%, and sugar beets from 45%, while rapeseed harvesting has been completed.
In its Inflation Report published at the end of July, the National Bank of Ukraine lowered its forecast for this year’s grain harvest from 61.7 million tons to 57.9 million tons, and for oilseeds from 22 million tons to 21 million tons.
The NBU recalled that last year, the grain harvest in Ukraine fell to 56.2 million tons from 59.8 million tons in 2023, while oilseeds fell from 21.7 million tons to 20 million tons.
According to forecasts by Deputy Minister of Economy Taras Vysotsky, this year’s grain harvest will be around 56 million tons, the same as last year.
