Investment revenues after the end of hostilities may continue, 74% of Ukrainians surveyed believe so, 16% do not believe in it and another 10% bother to answer, according to the results of the Gradus Research survey of professional mobility of Ukrainians against the background of human capital crisis.
According to it, 84% of respondents believe in the creation of new jobs after the end of hostilities, 13% do not believe and another 5% found it difficult to answer.
“Attracting older people to the labor market is another stream that is now being discussed widely in the business community. 70% of people of retirement age are willing to consider a job after retirement. The reason is the same: pensions are small, insufficient, people are ready to work as long as they can,” said Eugenia Bliznyuk, founder and director of the research company, during the presentation of the study at the Kyiv International Economic Forum (KIEF) on Thursday.
According to her, the main barriers that are important for the elderly are the limited number of vacancies for them.
As for Ukrainians in general, the majority consider changing profession as a real step to improve the quality of life: more than 64% of respondents are ready to learn a new profession to remain competitive in the labor market.
In addition, 73% of respondents noted that they have changed their occupation at least once, 18% have changed their job more than three times in the last three years.
The majority of respondents wishing to change jobs in the next year prefer to find employment in Ukraine – 82%. However, 9% consider the possibility of working abroad, which emphasizes the importance of creating promising jobs within the country.
Decent salary level (67%), social package (40%) and official employment (40%), comfortable working conditions (39%) are the most important for the interviewed Ukrainians when choosing a place of work.
Also 70% of respondents noted that their main motive for changing profession is the opportunity to receive a higher salary. Other important factors include flexible working hours and job security after training. This indicates that Ukrainians strive for a work-life balance.
At the same time, among the main barriers that complicate mastering a new profession, the surveyed Ukrainians named high cost of training (55%), difficulty in acquiring the necessary skills (38%) and insufficient level of skills (34%).
The majority of surveyed citizens support the idea that women can work in traditionally “male” fields (58%), but barriers remain. The main difficulties for women in such occupations are the physical characteristics of the occupations (69%), the difficulty of balancing work and family (43%), stereotypes (36%), unequal pay (30%) and lack of appropriate infrastructure (26%).
Construction of a glass plant in Kyiv region is scheduled to begin in spring 2025, said Igor Liski, owner of the EFI Group investment holding.
“This is a very complex project, we have been working on it for two years. I really hope that by the end of the year we will be able to announce the start of construction. We have already completed the entire production line. I hope that we will break ground in the spring,” Liski said at the 10th Kyiv International Economic Forum in Kyiv on Thursday.
According to him, the total investment in one production line is about EUR230 million, while about EUR100 million is export credit financing from European partners who finance their equipment.
Liski emphasized that this glass plant is a symbol of Ukraine’s recovery, so there are no plans to export it. The businessman predicts that the production of its own glass will help save the state up to EUR200 million in foreign currency earnings per year.
“We should first cover our own (needs – IF-U). Now we import on one line, after the war is over, we will need at least two lines, so we are designing a plant for two lines at once, which is another EUR200 million. Glass is a very promising product: not only technological, energy-efficient windows, but also solar panels, the automotive industry, and armored glass. Let’s eat this elephant in parts. In total, the project will cost more than a billion in 10 years, and this is only for Ukraine,” he said.
As reported, Liski plans to invest $80 million in the glass plant project.
Liski is the owner of the EFI Group investment holding (“Effective Investments”). The company’s areas of investment include healthcare and medtech, paper, food and woodworking industries, and agricultural supplies.
The company’s businesses include Feednova, an animal fats and feed additives producer, Medical Star healthcare network, Zhytomyr Cardboard Mill, Sam Ecopack, a cardboard packaging manufacturer, Forest Technology, an agricultural products supplier, Efi Agro, and Doc.ua, an online medical hub.
Metinvest Mining and Metallurgical Group has built about 600 steel bunkers and command posts for the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) and other units as part of Rinat Akhmetov’s Steel Front initiative.
Metinvest’s Chief Operating Officer Oleksandr Myronenko told the American magazine Newsweek that out of the 600 bunkers, about 480 were used to create “hideouts.” Another 120 bunkers were used to make 20 steel command posts, of which about 14 are already in operation and the rest have been delivered to the teams preparing to use them.
The remaining four command posts will be handed over to the National Guard after production is completed. One more will go to the Kraken unit, which is part of the Main Intelligence Directorate.
It takes about a week to build a “hideout”. The six bunkers can be connected into a more complex structure to form a steel command post.
According to Myronenko, the bunkers are designed to provide minimal comfort to the military near the front line. The 20 command posts can accommodate unit commanders, store weapons or provide sleeping quarters for the military.
The bunkers were used to build fortifications along Ukraine’s defense lines near the city of Pokrovsk, Donetsk Oblast.
“Metinvest is a vertically integrated group of steel and mining companies. The Group’s enterprises are located primarily in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovs’k regions. The main shareholders of the holding are SCM Group (71.24%) and Smart Holding (23.76%), which jointly manage it. Metinvest Holding LLC is the management company of Metinvest Group.
Dnipro Metallurgical Plant (DMZ), a part of DCH Steel of businessman Aleksandr Yaroslavsky’s DCH Group, reduced rolled steel production by 61.2% year-on-year to 35.8 thousand tons in January-October this year.
According to a report in DCH Steel’s corporate newspaper on Thursday, the company did not produce rolled steel in October, selling products made in previous periods. At the same time, the company shipped 2.1 thousand tons of rolled steel last month, while in October 2023 it produced 9.2 thousand tons.
“In October, rolling shop No. 1 drilled holes in rails before shipping them to customers. Rolling Shop No. 2 was preparing for a new rolling campaign, which is scheduled to start on November 11,” the company said in a statement.
Coke production for 10 months of 2024 decreased by 1.2% to 242.6 thousand tons. In October, coke production increased by 1.9% month-on-month to 24.5 thousand tons. In October 2023, 26.5 thousand tons of metallurgical coke were produced.
As reported, in 2023, DMZ increased its rolled metal output by 86.2% compared to 2022, up to 105.6 thousand tons, and coke output by 38.5%, up to 292.7 thousand tons.
In 2022, the plant reduced rolled steel production by 74.2% compared to 2021, to 58.4 thousand tons, and coke production by 56.3%, to 211.3 thousand tons.
DMZ specializes in the production of steel, pig iron, rolled products and products made from them.
On March 1, 2018, DCH Group signed an agreement to buy Dnipro Metallurgical Plant from Evraz.
Germany increased exports of goods to Russia by 3.6% in September compared to August, according to the Federal Statistical Office of Germany (Destatis). At the same time, imports from Russia rose by 20.1%.
On a year-on-year basis, September exports to Russia rose 5.6%, but imports from Russia fell 34.4%. Overall, between January and September, German exports from Germany to Russia decreased by 18.5% year-on-year, while imports decreased by 53.6%.
Total seasonally adjusted German exports fell 1.7% in September to €128.2 billion, the first decline since June. By contrast, imports rose 2.1% to €111.3 billion.
Exports to the European Union in September were down 1.8% from August, while shipments to non-EU countries fell 1.6%. Exports to the US increased by 4.8%, exports to China decreased by 3.7% and exports to the UK decreased by 4.9%. Imports from the EU increased by 1.6% and imports from outside the EU increased by 2.6%. In particular, imports from China increased by 5.6%, from the US decreased by 0.3% and from the UK by 0.6%.
Germany’s foreign trade balance surplus narrowed to €17 billion in September from €21.4 billion in August.
As part of a partnership project with OKKO Group, Agrotrade Agricultural Holding shipped 24.4 thousand tons of rapeseed by sea from Odesa to Ghent (Belgium), the press service of the agricultural holding reported on Facebook.
According to the report, half of this cargo – about 12 thousand tons – is grain grown on the fields of the agricultural holding in 2024. The rest of the cargo belongs to OKKO Group.
“This shipment is a big step forward for us, as we used to export small batches of rapeseed by sea – 3-5 thousand tons each. This year, we agreed with OKKO that we would make a partnership project, share the risks and ship the vessel together. This has many advantages, in particular, in terms of saving on ship freight. There were many difficult moments during the shipment, but we successfully dealt with them. In addition, the economy was one of the best this year compared to other sales,” said Andrii But, Director of the Foreign Trade Department of Agrotrade.
At the same time, he noted the high quality of rapeseed grown and sold by the agricultural holding. In particular, the oil content in the grain is 45%, while the basic indicators are usually 40-42%.
Agrotrade Group is a vertically integrated holding company with a full agro-industrial cycle (production, processing, storage and trade of agricultural products). It cultivates over 70 thousand hectares of land in Chernihiv, Sumy, Poltava and Kharkiv regions. Its main crops are sunflower, corn, winter wheat, soybeans and rapeseed. It has its own network of elevators with a simultaneous storage capacity of 570 thousand tons.
The group also produces hybrid seeds of corn and sunflower, barley, and winter wheat. In 2014, a seed plant with a capacity of 20 thousand tons of seeds per year was built on the basis of Kolos seed farm (Kharkiv region). In 2018, Agrotrade launched its own brand Agroseeds on the market.
Vsevolod Kozhemiako is the founder and CEO of Agrotrade.
OKKO Group unites more than 10 diversified businesses in production, trade, construction, insurance, maintenance and other services. The flagship company of the group is Galnaftogaz, which operates one of the largest filling stations in Ukraine under the OKKO brand, with about 400 filling stations.
The group’s founder and ultimate beneficiary is Vitaliy Antonov.
