Sukha Balka mine (Kryvyi Rih, Dnipro region), part of Aleksandr Yaroslavsky’s DCH group, commissioned two longwalls for iron ore production in February.
According to a report in DCH Steel’s corporate newspaper on Thursday, miners at Yubileynaya Mine commissioned two new blocks that will ensure the company’s operation in the near future.
According to the approved plans for 2024, the commissioning of new facilities at Yubileynaya mine in February, two blocks were put into operation – 36-42, 3rd floor of the Gnezdo deposit and block 1-4 of the Main deposit at the 1420m horizon.
The total reserves of the two blocks amount to 332 thousand tons of ore.
Blocks 36-42 have already started producing crude ore, and mining in blocks 1-4, which contain about 220 thousand tons of ore, will begin next week.
The commissioning of the two blocks will ensure stable ore production at Yubileynaya mine for six months.
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.
Sukha Balka mine is one of the leading mining companies in Ukraine. It produces iron ore using an underground method. The mine includes Yubileynaya and Frunze mines. Frunze mine.
DCH Group acquired the mine from Evraz Group in May 2017.
The Ministry of Education and Science invites architects to take part in a competition for school renovation projects.
“Teams of architects can submit design ideas for the competition. The design project developed by the winner of the competition will be available for free to all communities. Its availability will allow donors to speed up decision-making on financing school reconstruction, and communities to save time and money,” the ministry’s press service said.
It is noted that the authors of the three best project ideas will receive awards ranging from 8 thousand to 12 thousand euros, and the winner of the competition will sign a contract for 300 thousand euros, which provides for the development of an adaptive school design project.
According to the rules, a team wishing to participate in the competition must consist of at least two architects: one must be authorized to practice in Ukraine and the other must be authorized to practice abroad.
According to the report, the School of the Future for Ukraine project was initiated by the Lithuanian government in partnership with the State Agency for the Restoration and Development of Infrastructure of Ukraine with the assistance of the Ministry of Education of Ukraine.
Within the first competitions of the NEXT Romania-Ukraine cross-border communities development program for the period 2021-2027, 120 projects with a non-refundable value of EUR87 million have been submitted, according to the project’s press service.
The press service of the Romanian Ministry of Development, Public Works and Administration told Interfax-Ukraine that the submitted projects include 153 partners from Romania and 158 from Ukraine.
The Interreg NEXT Romania-Ukraine program has a budget of EUR54 million in grant funds, to which the national contribution will be added. Projects that will benefit border communities in Satu Mare, Maramures, Botosani, Suceava and Tulcea counties (Romania), as well as in Ivano-Frankivsk, Zakarpattya, Chernivtsi and Odessa regions (Ukraine) will be eligible for funding.
According to the press service, a call for standard projects (projects with an infrastructure component of at least EUR500,000) was announced in August 2023. EUR12.6 mln allocated for this competition will be used for investments in healthcare and education. Within the framework of the competition 49 projects were submitted, the grant value of which is EUR60 mln.
The Small Projects Competition was launched in September 2023. This competition has a budget of EUR14.5 million, which will be directed to measures on climate change prevention and control, biodiversity conservation, health, education and border management. Seventy-one projects were submitted, with a total value of EUR27 million in grant funds.
According to the press service of the Romanian Ministry of Development, Public Works and Administration, the most applications – 29 standard and 13 small – were submitted in the direction of ensuring equal access to health care and increasing the sustainability of health care systems, including primary health care, as well as promoting the transition from institutional to family-based care.
The second most popular focus area is educational. 20 standard and 17 small projects were designed to improve equitable access to inclusive and quality education, training and lifelong learning services through the development of accessible infrastructure.
15 small projects focused on improving the protection and conservation of nature, biodiversity and green infrastructure, including in urban areas; 13 small projects focused on disaster risk prevention, strengthening resilience through ecosystem approaches.
Border crossing management was addressed by 13 small projects submitted.
The projects will be subjected to an evaluation and selection procedure in the following period.At this stage, a detailed analysis of the submitted projects is underway and the results of the selection process will be presented tentatively in early summer, with contracts ideally signed by the first quarter of 2025, but “the actual duration of the process will also depend on the quality of the applications submitted and the number of clarifications required”.
All submitted projects will go through two stages of evaluation: eligibility and quality. Applications that pass all these stages will be subject to approval by the Monitoring Committee (a joint structure composed of members from both countries).
Funding will be awarded to projects that best meet the requirements of the Applicant’s Guidelines and that will actually contribute to community development in the border region.
Interreg NEXT, the EU’s cooperation programs with neighboring regions, comprises 184 regions with a population of 260 million people in 33 countries and is located along the EU’s external borders from the northern periphery to the Mediterranean region and from the Atlantic to the Black Sea basin.
Interreg NEXT cooperation programs for the period 2021-2027 include EUR1.1 billion from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the Neighborhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument (NDICI) and the Instrument for Pre-Accession (IPA).
CLIMATE CHANGE, cross-border communities, EDUCATION, HEALTH, Interreg NEXT
KSG Agro and Genesus Ukraine LLC (Kyiv) have signed a one-year contract for the supply of 3.5 thousand head of Canadian-bred pigs of Genesus breeding, the press service of the agricultural holding reported.
According to the report, Genesus Ukraine undertook to supply 3.5 thousand heads of purebred and hybrid pigs GP (Yorkshire) and F1 (Yorkshire + Landrace) to the pig farms of KSG Agro in 2024. In addition, 30 heads of purebred boars of the Duroc and Landrace breeds will be supplied under the agreement. The first delivery of pigs is expected on March 1, 2024.
“We have repeatedly noted the qualitative advantages of Canadian Genesus pigs, which are superior to their European counterparts in terms of litter size, farrowing weight and meat quality. This year, we will continue the process of renewing the pig herd, which began in 2023 and is aimed at improving the quality characteristics of the herd. These include improving the health of piglets and improving the taste of meat,” said Sergiy Kasyanov, Chairman of the Board of Directors of KSG Agro.
“Our company has been cooperating with KSG Agro, one of the leaders in the Ukrainian pig breeding market, for three years now. And this year our cooperation is reaching a new level in terms of volume. This once again proves in practice that Genesus pigs are hardy, grow quickly and develop well, producing the maximum possible number of kilograms of piglets per square meter of farm,” said Genesus representative in Ukraine Yevhen Shatokhin.
KSG Agro noted that the main quality indicators of Canadian Genesus pigs are 2.55 farrowings per year, 16 piglets born, the average weaning age is 21 days, and the average weaning weight is 6-6.3 kg.
KSG Agro, a vertically integrated holding company, is engaged in pig production, as well as the production, storage, processing and sale of grains and oilseeds. Its land bank is about 21 thousand hectares in Dnipropetrovska and Kherson regions.
According to the agricultural holding, it is one of the top 5 pork producers in Ukraine. In 2023, it launched a “network-centric” strategy, which will move from developing a large location to a number of smaller pork production facilities located in different regions of Ukraine.
In January-September 2023, KSG Agro earned $1,336 million in net profit, which is almost 14 times more than in the same period in 2022. Its EBITDA for the three quarters of this year increased by 67% to $4.5 million, and sales revenue increased by 16% to $11.9 million.
Genesus is the world’s largest privately held genetics company specializing in the breeding of pigs. Genesus is headquartered in Manitoba, Canada. The company’s nucleus and breeding farms are located in many countries around the world, including Canada, the United States, China, Thailand, the Philippines, France, Spain, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
Genesus Ukraine LLC supplies pigs from the UK and Canada, and in Ukraine owns pig breeding facilities at Agrarian Company 2004 LLC (Popovtsi, Khmelnytsky region), which is part of the Vitagro agricultural holding.
According to the Unified Register of Legal Entities and Individual Entrepreneurs, the ultimate beneficiary of Genesus Ukraine is Andriy Zaretskyi (Kyiv).
Ukraine is close to reaching a deal with the International Monetary Fund to receive the next $900 million disbursement of its $15.6 billion loan, a boost to the war-torn country’s budget and a vote of confidence as U.S. aid remains fragile, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.
According to the agency, Ukraine expects to reach an agreement with IMF staff as early as Thursday, according to officials with knowledge of the talks who asked not to be identified because the deal is not yet finalized. The agreement must be ratified by the IMF’s executive board, which is almost always done without problems.
A team of IMF staff led by IMF Chief of Mission Gavin Gray, which has been assessing whether Ukraine has met the conditions for the loan, is to complete its work and make a statement Thursday in Washington, officials said. According to one of the officials, it may take several more days to finalize the agreement at the staff level, Bloomberg reports.
As reported earlier, the IMF mission and Ukrainian authorities held talks in Warsaw and online on the third revision of the EFF Extended Fund Facility program. The four-year EFF program was approved on March 31, 2023. The first tranche of USD 2.7 billion was disbursed in early April, the second and third tranches of SDR 664 million (approximately USD 881-890 million at the then exchange rate) in early July and mid-December.
The program’s planned schedule provides for the disbursement of another tranche to Ukraine at the end of February 2024 based on the results of the third review, when the fulfillment of obligations as of the end of December 2023 is assessed. Three more tranches are envisaged for 2024: SDR1.670 billion ($2.226 billion) in mid-June, followed by SDR835 million ($1,113 million) in early September and December. Two tranches are planned for 2025: SDR684 million ($912 million) in early March and late August, followed by the last three tranches of SDR966 million ($1.288 billion).
The EU Council announced on Wednesday that the Committee of Permanent Representatives (Coreper) of the European Union has agreed on the Council’s negotiating mandate to extend for another year the suspension of import duties and quotas on Ukrainian and Moldovan exports to the EU.
“By agreeing to renew these measures, we demonstrate our continued support for Ukraine and Moldova, while protecting the internal market from excessive increases in imports of certain sensitive agricultural products,” commented Aja Labib, Foreign Minister of Belgium, which holds the EU Council presidency, on the agreement of the Permanent Representatives.
The Council communiqué explains that the two legislative proposals that member states will discuss with the European Parliament are aimed at extending the suspension of import duties and quotas for another year: from June 6, 2024 to June 5, 2025 for Ukraine and from July 25, 2024 to July 24, 2025 for Moldova – provided that “the protection of sensitive agricultural products is simultaneously enhanced by strengthening safeguards” already included in the relevant existing regulations.
Brussels explains that “by renewing these measures, the EU will continue to support and stimulate trade flows from Ukraine to the EU and the rest of the world, and will contribute to creating conditions for the expansion of economic and trade relations leading to the gradual integration of Ukraine into the EU’s internal structure.”
As for Moldova, these measures are intended to “help preserve the conditions necessary to enable Moldova to continue its trade relations with the EU and with the rest of the world through the EU,” the EU Council said.
