Global stainless steel production in 2025 increased by 2.1% compared to the previous year, reaching 64.157 million tons from 62.821 million tons.
These figures are provided in a press release from The World Stainless Association (formerly the International Stainless Steel Forum, ISSF).
According to the information, in the fourth quarter of 2025, production reached 16.330 million tons, while in the same period in 2024, 16.198 million tons were produced.
At the same time, stainless steel production in Europe decreased by 1.9% in 2025, to 5.659 million tons. In the US, production increased by 7.6%, to 2.099 million tons.
In Asia (excluding China and South Korea), stainless steel production last year increased by 2.7% to 55.313 million tons, and in China it increased by 3.6% to 40.868 million tons.
In other regions (Brazil, Russia, South Africa, the UK, and Ukraine), production fell by 11.3% to 1.086 million tons.
As reported, global stainless steel production in 2024 increased by 7% compared to 2023, to 62.621 million tons from 58.539 million tons, with production growing in all major regions.
At the same time, stainless steel production in Europe in 2024 increased by 1.5% to 6.088 million tons. In the US, production increased by 6.9% to 1.950 million tons. In Asia (excluding China and South Korea), stainless steel production increased by 6.4% to 7.322 million tons, and in China, it increased by 7.5% to 39.441 million tons. In other regions (Brazil, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, and Indonesia), production increased by 9.2% to 7.820 million tons.
Global stainless steel production in 2023 increased by 4.6% compared to 2022, to 58.444 million tons. Overall, stainless steel production in Europe fell by 6.2% to 5.902 million tons this year, and in the US by 9.6% to 1.824 million tons. Meanwhile, in Asia (excluding China and South Korea), stainless steel production decreased by 7.2% to 6.880 million tons, while in China it increased by 12.6% to 36.676 million tons. Other regions (Brazil, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, and Indonesia) saw a 5.2% decline in production to 7.163 million tons.
Global stainless steel production in 2022 decreased by 5.2% compared to 2021, to 55.255 million tons. At the same time, production in Europe fell by 12.4% to 6.294 million tons, and in the US by 14.8% to 2.017 million tons. In Asia (excluding China and South Korea), stainless steel production decreased by 4.9% to 7.411 million tons, and in China by 2% to 31.975 million tons. Other regions saw a 9.1% decline in production to 7.557 million tons.
According to the results of 2025, Lutsk Agrarian Company (Avesterra Group) produced 56,003 thousand tons of products, which is 6.8% more than in 2024 (52,448 thousand tons), while net revenue grew by 28.2% to UAH 4.77 billion, the company’s press service told the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.
According to the company’s financial indicators, net profit for the year amounted to UAH 472.68 million, compared to UAH 408.63 million a year earlier.
The group’s press release notes that in 2025, approximately UAH 500 million in taxes were paid to budgets at all levels (approximately UAH 1.5 billion during the period of full-scale war).
“For us, being recognized as one of the best taxpayers is confirmation of our responsible approach to business. Avesterra Group will continue to operate transparently, supporting Ukraine’s food security,” emphasized the company’s CEO, Svitlana Sobipan.
According to the head of the relevant committee of the Verkhovna Rada, Danylo Getmantsev, the company entered the ranking of leaders in terms of taxes paid among meat producers.
According to him, the list of the largest taxpayers in the industry in 2025 also includes Globinsky Meat Processing Plant LLC, Meat Master LLC, Koziatinsky Meat Processing Plant LLC, Agro-Ros LLC, Zhytomyr Meat Processing Plant LLC, Meat-IF LLC, Stovpynski Sausages LLC, and Dmitruk-Foods LLC. In addition to large enterprises, high tax efficiency was demonstrated by Poliana M Farm, Galmyaso Private Enterprise, and a number of individual entrepreneurs.
As reported, Avesterra Group intends to increase its poultry population by 2.5 times to 10 million birds (currently 4.1 million birds). To provide feed for the new capacity, it is planned to modernize the existing feed mill or build a new one, as well as expand the land bank from 3,000 hectares to 25,000 hectares. The development strategy also provides for the creation of its own incubation facility and the formation of a parent flock to complete the full production cycle.
The Avesterra Group was established in January 2025. It includes the Volodymyr-Volynskyi Poultry Farm and the Lutsk Agricultural Company. In June 2025, Avesterra launched a new 30,000 sq m processing plant in Volyn, with investments amounting to EUR 60 million.
Avesterra Group owns infrastructure consisting of 100 poultry houses, a slaughterhouse, and seven branches in the largest cities of Ukraine. The company’s financial statements are audited annually by an international auditor. The business is owned in equal shares by the Dobkin family.
Volodymyr-Volynskyi Poultry Farm accounts for about 5% of the Ukrainian chicken market. It has seven branches: Kharkiv, Kyiv, Odesa, Dnipro, Vinnytsia, Lviv, and Volodymyr. The factory’s infrastructure consists of 100 poultry houses, a slaughterhouse, and a feed mill. The company also has its own land fund of 3,000 hectares, where it grows grains and legumes for the production of feed, as well as industrial crops. The factory employs over 1,500 people.
The national postal operator Ukrposhta has launched auctions for the sale of 20 unused real estate properties with a total area of 32,800 square meters, with a starting price of over UAH 200 million, the company’s CEO Ihor Smelyansky announced on Thursday.
According to his Telegram post, the properties listed on the Prozorro.Prozori platform range from a small building in a village in Zakarpattia to a 5,600-square-meter sorting center in Lviv.
The head of the company expects profits from the sale in the tens of millions of hryvnia, which will go towards investments, as well as savings on the maintenance of these properties and tax payments of over UAH 3 million.
“The funds received from the sale, in accordance with the decision of the shareholder of Ukrposhta, the Ministry of Community and Territorial Development, will be immediately directed to investments in fixed assets,” Smelyansky said.
The CEO of Ukrposhta specified that the sorting center, which was built in the 1920s in the very center of Lviv near the railway station, has a starting price for investors of UAH 56.9 million.
The day before, Ukrposhta also completed the second auction on Prozorro.Prozori for the sale of 716 units of decommissioned transport, receiving UAH 9 million, and is preparing to start the final sale of about 250 more vehicles.
In the fourth quarter of 2025, Ukrposhta received a net profit of UAH 257.9 million, which exceeded the figure for the same period in 2024 by 69.2% due to additional income from the sale of the company’s property, which amounted to UAH 168 million.
The national postal operator increased its revenue in the fourth quarter by UAH 10.7 million compared to the same period in 2024, to UAH 3 billion 601.6 million.
Ukraine needs to boost its presence in Sub-Saharan Africa and shift from exporting raw materials to investing in processing, as current supplies amount to only $280 million per year in a market worth $10 trillion, said Artem Gudkov, head of the Ukrainian-African Trade Mission, at the Forbes Agro conference in Kyiv on Thursday.
“The total volume of the African market is about $10 trillion in GDP in terms of purchasing power parity. For Ukraine, this is a huge potential and an opportunity to gain its subjectivity. However, as of now, the total volume of Ukrainian exports to Sub-Saharan Africa is only $280 million per year for 1.2 billion people. We supply less there than to neighboring Bulgaria,” he stressed.
Gudkov said that Russia is waging a food war against Ukraine on this continent and has introduced an “all or nothing” policy. According to him, if individual countries plan to purchase agricultural products from someone other than Russia, the aggressor threatens to stop supplies to the region altogether.
According to the head of the trade mission, Russia is already moving towards total control of logistics. In particular, the aggressor is negotiating with the Tanzanian government to build its own processing terminal in the port of Dar es Salaam, which will enable it to dictate the terms of wheat and corn supplies across the entire east coast of Africa.
Gudkov believes that the time of “simple imports” is over, so Ukrainian agribusiness needs to integrate into value-added chains directly in the region. African governments and businesses are increasingly interested in the transfer of Ukrainian technologies, not just the purchase of raw materials.
He recalled the European Global Gateway program, which provides EUR 150 billion to finance projects in Africa. According to Gudkov, Ukrainian businesses can become stakeholders in these funds by exporting equipment, elevators, and engineering solutions rather than raw materials.
The expert noted that Ukraine’s experience of working in wartime is unique for African countries, which also face security risks. The mission is already discussing the potential for implementing Ukrainian agricultural processing clusters on the continent.
“We have the opportunity to turn our economic front into an offensive as well. Russia is actively exporting food products. If we cannot influence oil, we can destroy their food ties through our own expansion,” the head of the mission concluded.
The Ukrainian-African trade mission promotes the entry of domestic enterprises into the markets of Sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on the export of processing technologies, agricultural machinery, and the creation of joint ventures.
Russian troops carried out about 1,200 combined strikes on Ukraine’s railway infrastructure in 2025, which is one of the three key problems of the season for agricultural exports, said Valery Tkachov, deputy director of the commercial department of Ukrzaliznytsia (UZ).
“The most painful thing for us is that our employees are dying under enemy fire. More than 1,000 railway workers have already been killed during the full-scale war. This is the most difficult challenge, which cannot be measured only by technical indicators,” he said at the Forbes Agro conference in Kyiv on Thursday.
Tkachov named security as the first systemic problem. Last year alone, the enemy carried out 1,200 attacks on railway energy facilities, rolling stock, and control centers in an attempt to completely stop the movement of export cargo.
Tkachov named the second critical problem as restrictions on the external power supply to the network due to strikes on the energy sector, which directly reduces the throughput capacity of key trunk lines. In particular, after the shelling of the Kolosivsky passage in the south and the Kamyanets-Podilsky junction in the west, Ukrzaliznytsia was forced to switch to the use of diesel locomotives on a massive scale.
This leads to a significant slowdown in train traffic, restrictions on train weight, and an increase in transportation costs due to the high cost of diesel fuel compared to electricity. The third set of problems in the work of Ukrzaliznytsia, according to Tkachov, covers economic and political barriers.
This particularly concerns restrictions on western land crossings from neighboring countries and low demand for Danube ports. Despite the availability of alternative routes through Reni and Izmail, agribusiness still prefers the ports of Greater Odessa, which creates an uneven load on the infrastructure.
The deputy director of the UZ department assured that the railway network remains stable, but its efficiency is still critically dependent on the stability of the power system and the security situation on the southern approaches to sea terminals.
