The founder of TAS Group of Companies (TAS), Sergey Tigipko, has announced new business areas for the group: the purchase of a seed plant and elevator with a storage capacity of 40 thousand tons, and the construction of apple processing plants and a railcar building plant.
“We are buying a seed plant and an elevator with 40 thousand tons of storage. We are building a railcar manufacturing plant in Kovel for the European railroad. We are building a plant for processing apples from scratch into apple concentrate,” said Tigipko at the 10th Kyiv International Economic Forum (KIEF).
TAS Group was founded in 1998. Its business interests include the financial sector (banking and insurance segments) and pharmacy, as well as industry, real estate, and venture capital projects.
“TAS Agro, a member of the group, cultivates 83 thousand hectares in Vinnytsia, Kyiv, Kirovohrad, Chernihiv, Mykolaiv, Sumy, Kherson, and Dnipro regions, where it grows soybeans, sunflower, rapeseed, wheat, barley, and corn. In addition, the agroholding is engaged in dairy farming (up to 5.5 thousand heads of cattle) and owns six elevators with a one-time storage capacity of 250 thousand tons.
Biopharma, a biopharmaceutical company based in Kyiv, will build production facilities to process 3.5 million liters of plasma in 10 years, the company’s president Konstantin Efimenko said.
“In 10 years, we have to build facilities capable of processing 3.5 million liters of plasma to meet the needs of Ukraine, the Balkans, Turkey, and the Middle East. We are working hard for this,” he said at the Kyiv International Economic Forum (KIEF) on Thursday.
Efimenko said that in March 2024, the company began building a plant in Uzhhorod.
“We are launching the plant in Uzhhorod in the first quarter of 2026, we have bought 3.5 hectares of land in the city of Arad, 200 km from Uzhhorod, in Romania, and we will start building the plant in March 2025,” he said.
Efymenko noted that in 2026, Biopharma plans to process 700 thousand liters of plasma at the plant in Bila Tserkva and reach a turnover of $250 million.
“We need to scale up. Our plant in Uzhhorod is two Bila Tserkva, our plant in Arania is two Bila Tserkva,” he said.
As reported, in early October, Efymenko said that the start of construction of the Biopharma plant (Biopharma, Kyiv) for the production of blood products in Romania would depend on the possibility of investment by companies from Ukraine. The cost of the project will be EUR 486 thousand.
In May 2025, the company plans to start installing equipment at the plant under construction in Uzhhorod, with commissioning to begin in April 2026.
Biopharma’s revenue in the first half of 2024 amounted to UAH 1.5 billion.
Ukraine currently has access to export products in 340 trade areas of agricultural products, and plans to open 240 more markets in the next five years, said Serhiy Tkachuk, head of the State Service for Food Safety and Consumer Protection.
“We are one of the key state agencies responsible for opening new markets: we work with more than 60 countries on plant and animal products. We intend to open 240 new markets within five years. At the same time, the process of our country’s integration into the EU continues. And if we look at Chapter 12 on food security, veterinary and phytosanitary policy, it alone accounts for 19% of the requirements that Ukraine faces in general. So, there is a lot of work to be done, but we will manage, because we are responsible to our defenders and future generations,” the Ministry’s press service quoted him as saying at the Kyiv International Forum.
Tkachuk also reminded that the service is one of the key players in opening new international markets for Ukrainian business, as it is responsible for controlling 100% of Ukrainian agricultural exports.
“Implementation of EU requirements is now a priority for Ukraine. But at the same time, it is important for us to defend our own interests – the interests of Ukrainian business, first and foremost. In particular, our tasks now include maintaining stable trade with partner countries, removing barriers to exports, lifting restrictions on exports of certain products, and simplifying certification and transit procedures,” he added.
The Head of the State Service of Ukraine on Food Safety and Consumer Protection also spoke about the digitalization of all processes and services of the agency. “According to him, the digitalization will reduce the time for obtaining permits from 5-20 days to 1-5 days. In addition, certain services, such as capacity registration, will be provided in real time, i.e. within a few minutes.
“It will be possible to apply for services online, without unnecessary trips, queues and stop documents, as well as to see the status of the service in your own online user account; see all inspections and their results; and pay for services easily through a single system with automatic generation of payment documents,” Tkachuk said.
Change in prices of food raw materials from Ukraine (forecast up to 2025), %
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Prices for construction and installation works in Ukraine in July-September 2024 increased by 6.4% compared to the same period in 2023, the State Statistics Service (Ukrstat) reported.
According to the statistics agency, in the third quarter, prices increased in all segments of construction: in residential construction, the growth was 7.8%, in non-residential construction – 6.7%, and in engineering – 5.7%. Compared to the previous quarter of this year, prices increased by 1.9%, 1.5% and 1.5%, respectively.
In September 2024 to September 2023, prices for construction and installation works increased by 5.9%, while the figures remained at the level of August 2024. In the first nine months of 2024, construction prices rose by 8.5% compared to the same period last year.
As reported, in 2023, prices for construction and installation work rose by 15.8% compared to the previous year. The State Statistics Service noted that the figures exclude the temporarily occupied territories and part of the territories where hostilities are (were) conducted.
NPC Ukrenergo and Polish system operator PSE are considering increasing electricity imports to Ukraine by an additional 150 MW, which could bring the total to 2.5 GW of electricity imports from Europe, acting CEO of Ukrenergo Oleksiy Brekht said at the 10th Kyiv International Economic Forum (KIEF) on Thursday.
”2,100 MW is the basic value that we have and can maintain. Further, we have the so-called guaranteed emergency assistance, which is another 250 MW. And today we are working with the Polish system operator on another initiative that could provide an additional 150 MW of imports,” he said.
According to Brecht, the total capacity of European imports will thus reach 2.5 GW. “In total, this is 2500 MW, almost 2.5 nuclear power units, which will help us significantly this winter,” the head of the company emphasized.
As he informed, Ukraine, together with its European partners, expects to achieve stable supply of the achieved import volumes also after the autumn-winter period of 2024-25.
“We expect that in the spring we will have a dynamic opportunity to revise the establishment of certain throughput capacities (interstate crossings of power lines) and expect that it will not be lower than the existing value,” Brecht said.
As reported, Ukraine and the EU have agreed to increase the maximum capacity of electricity imports from the EU countries from December 1, 2024, from the current 1.7 to 2.1 GW.
Ukraine will also have an additional 250 MW of guaranteed capacity for emergency flows from the EU.
In turn, starting from March 2025, European transmission system operators will be able to review the capacity limit for commercial electricity exchange between the EU, Ukraine and Moldova on a monthly basis.
