KYIV. Oct 18 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Poland’s PolskiBus.com carrier in cooperation with Ideal Travel would launch two new routes using which residents of 18 Polish towns would be able to go to Lviv and six other Ukrainian cities every day.
According to a posting on the carrier’s website, first trips will be made on October 21 and the tickets are available on www.polskibus.com.
At the first phase of cooperation the offers of PolskiBus.com will be expanded to two daily lines: U1 (Szczecin – Gorzow Wielkopolski – Pila – Bydgoszcz – Torun – Wloclawek – Plock – Warsaw – Radom – Lublin – Lviv – Ivano-Frankivsk – Chernivtsi) and U2 (Poznan – Leszno – Wroclaw – Opole – Katowice – Krakow – Tarnow – Rzeszow – Lviv – Ternopil – Vinnytsia – Khmelnyk – Kherson).
The trips will be serviced using buses of Ideal Travel and Ukrainian partner Fortuna Reisen. Most of buses would have air conditioners, Wi-Fi, WC and sockets.
PolskiBus.com operates on 18 routes in 26 Polish cities and towns.
Thanks to cooperation with partners PolskiBus.com has 28 additional lines offering trips to Amsterdam, Dusseldorf, Hamburg and Zurich.
KYIV. Oct 18 (Interfax-Ukraine) – DEZEGA Holding Ukraine, the designer and producer of mine rescue equipment, has signed a contract with the largest international tunneling company Bouygues Construction to supply self-contained self-rescuers for workers of the Inner Doha Resewerage Implementation Strategy (IDRIS) project in Qatar.
The company said in a press release on Monday that IDRIS will use 60 minute self-contained self-rescuers certified in Europe. The certificate is approved in Qatar.
DEZEGA training self-rescuers will be used to train workers.
“We have managed to confirm the status of manufacturer with the best ratio between the price and quality of products in our segment and win the tender to supply the self-rescuers. The market of Qatar is new for us. In the future we are going to continue its development,” the press service said, citing Holding Development Director Yuriy Spivak.
The cost of the contract and other bidders in the tender are not disclosed.
The $3 billion IDRIS project envisages construction of over 45 km of ductwork, 70 km of side ducts and a pump station 70 meters deep. This is the largest sewage project in the world. The project was designed due to growth of population in Doha, the capital of Qatar and the city’s preparations to host World Cup 2022.
The implementation of the project will start in November 2016.
KYIV. Oct 18 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Iron ore producer Ferrexpo with assets in Ukraine seeks to produce at least 11.2-11.3 million tonnes of iron ore pellets in 2016, which is slightly less than in 2015. This is linked to repair works. The share of high-quality 65% Fe products would grow from 87% last year to 94%, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications at Ferrexpo Ingrid McMahon has said.
“We hope that it would be more [than 11.2-11.3 million tonnes]. It is important for us that 94% is high-quality 65% Fe products,” she told reporters in Kyiv last week.
McMahon explained a small decrease compared to the results of the previous year by repair carried out in Q3 2016.
“We will try to catch in Q4 2016,” she said.
She said that current demand on the company’s products exceeds its possibilities.
According to the company’s presentation, demand on pellets could grow from 408 million tonnes in 2015 to 493 million tonnes in 2020, or 3.9-4% every year. McMahon said that in 2018 the situation on the market could become more volatile, as Brazil’s Samarco that produced 30 million tonnes of pellets a year and suspended operations after an incident in the tailing dump in November 2015 would return to the market. She expressed confidence that Ferrexpo would have good positions on the market thanks to high quality of its products and low cash cost.
McMahon said that thanks to it the company recently managed to increase the share of customers from Europe and Japan and started supplies to South Korea. However, the share of China of total supplies fell from 20-25% to 13%. She said that in 9M 2016 the share of customers from Central and Eastern Europe was 48%, Western Europe – 17%, Northeast Asia – 16% and Turkey where demand on 62% Fe pellets still recorded – 6%.
She said that in 2017 the company intends to invest at least $50 million in development.
Ferrexpo is interested in dredging works at the Yuzhny port announced by the Ukrainian Sea Port Authority as part of the implementation of the project to build new berths by TIS and Cargill.
She said that in the future if the markets are liberalized, the company could consider the possibility of buying own locomotives for its fleet of 2,252 wagons and return to river transport for delivering products using the Dnipro River, not only the Danube River.
KYIV. Oct 17 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has held a meeting with Chairman of DP World Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem.
Poroshenko emphasized that it was the right time and right place to invest in Ukraine and said that global business was interested in our state, the Ukrainian president press service reported.
He noted that the Ukrainian authorities were doing everything possible to encourage foreign investors. For this end, the National Investment Council under the president of Ukraine has been established.
The head of state invited Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem to join the Council.
For his part, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem thanked for the invitation and said he was interested in the development of cooperation with Ukraine, which has huge transport resources and remarkable human potential. “We consider Ukraine as a state that will connect us with Europe. That is why we want to work here,” he said.
Poroshenko praised the signature of the memorandum between the Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine and DP World. This document provides for the immediate establishment of the joint expert group for the analysis of existing opportunities and mechanisms of investments in our state.
The head of state instructed the Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine to take this work under personal control and report on the progress of implementation of the project.
KYIV. Oct 17 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko in Frankfurt, Germany, held a meeting with potential investors interested in the implementation of a project to complete the Podilsko-Voskresensky Bridge in Kyiv.
The press service of the city mayor reported that the bridge has been built since 2003.
“With enough financing it will take around three years to launch the bridge. Then we can speak about subway. The issue of subway to Troyeschyna remains important for us. We will complete the project. We will not be able to launch subway to Troyeschyna without the bridge,” Klitschko said.
The mayor expressed hope that with the help of Germany Kyiv would find investors and “German companies will join the implementation of this important and strategic project for Kyiv.”
Kyiv city has only five motor way bridges across the Dnipro River and they are the most congested sections of the city road network.
Klitschko thanked Germany for the help provided to Kyiv. He pointed out effective cooperation with State Secretary of the Ministry for Transport and Digital Infrastructure of Germany Rainer Bomba. The mayor said that Kyiv’s authorities would make everything that depends on them to finish the bridge and make Kyiv more comfortable for driving.
German businessmen said that they are ready for further talks and consultations to clarify all issues linked to the implementation of the project. They agreed to conduct a technical and financial study of the project and specify some legislative issues to find out if it is possible to build the bridge under European technical requirements.
“The next meeting to discuss the implementation of the project is to be held in Berlin in November,” the press service said.
KYIV. Oct 17 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The land reform in Ukraine should take into account large commodity production and its retaining after revoking a moratorium to sell farmland, the owner of Nibulon agricultural company Oleksiy Vadatursky has said.
“Without passing relevant legislative base that would provide for medium and transparent mechanism for switching to market relations, we would gain return to cultivating land in sections,” the company said in a statement citing Vadatursky.
He said that if the moratorium is annulled, large land parcels will be scattered, which would decrease efficiency of farmland use.
“Of course, each land owner has the right to freely use its ownership. When you are the co-owner of a large stock of land, you should take into account opinions and interests of all. The decision of one person automatically concerns other land owners and influences them,” he said.
Vadatursky said that today a lot of land parcels are cultivated without understanding who is the owner of them. There are many land parcels cultivated by one company, but in fact they have been resold to 10 other companies.
He said that Ukrainian legislation should foresee the right to lease land for a long period of time (20-25 years and more) with the right of getting land lease fees in advance for the whole period when the agreement is in effect.
He said that lawmakers must protect land owners, leasers and investors. Bills must be published to discuss them with the public and experts.
