Ukrtransgaz plans to invest UAH 998.277 million in the development of natural gas storage facilities in 2024 in accordance with the gas storage development plan for 2024-2033 approved by the National Energy and Utilities Regulatory Commission (NEURC) at a meeting on Tuesday.
“We are moving towards 100% fulfillment of investment programs in general,” said Roman Malyutin, Ukrtransgaz CEO, at the meeting.
According to him, the approved plan provides for the reconstruction and construction of fixed assets of technological processes in the gas storage system, the development of critical infrastructure security facilities, including cybersecurity, and information technology.
According to the document, the company intends to invest UAH 472.355 million this year in the operation of gas storage facilities, UAH 415.988 million in the development of underground gas storage facilities, UAH 66.442 million in the modernization and purchase of vehicles, special machines and mechanisms, UAH 27.413 million in the purchase of diagnostic and inspection equipment and other devices, and UAH 16.079 million in industrial and administrative buildings.
In total, Ukrtransgaz’s gas storage development plan for 2024-2033 envisages an investment of UAH 14 billion 534.148 million.
In 2023, Astarta Agro Holding, the largest sugar producer in Ukraine, paid UAH 2.31 billion in taxes and fees to the budgets of all levels, up 42% compared to 2022, the company’s press service reported on Facebook.
According to the report, over UAH 1.31 billion of this amount went to local budgets of territorial communities in Poltava, Khmelnytsky, Vinnytsia, Ternopil, Zhytomyr, Chernihiv, and Kharkiv regions of Ukraine.
“In terms of the entire team of the agro-industrial holding in 2023, Astarta paid UAH 343 thousand of taxes per employee. In total, during the full-scale war alone, our company transferred over UAH 3.84 billion to the budgets of all levels. This is our contribution to strengthening the country’s defense capability, increasing the economic resilience of local communities, enhancing social responsibility and transparency of Ukrainian business,” said Viktor Ivanchuk, founder and CEO of the agricultural holding.
In addition, Astarta, together with its Ukrainian and international partners, also continues to implement social initiatives as part of the Common Help Ukraine humanitarian project. As of today, the financial value of charitable contributions and humanitarian aid provided by the project already exceeds UAH 1.062 billion.
“Astarta is a vertically integrated agro-industrial holding company operating in eight regions of Ukraine. It comprises six sugar factories, agricultural enterprises with a land bank of 220 thousand hectares and dairy farms with 22 thousand cattle, an oil extraction plant in Globyno (Poltava region), seven elevators and a biogas complex.
In the third quarter of 2023, the agricultural holding earned EUR1.24 million in net profit, down 27.7 times compared to the same period in 2022. Astarta’s revenue decreased by 14.4% to EUR104.75 million, gross profit by 2.7 times to EUR26.96 million, operating profit by 7.6 times to EUR6.79 million, and EBITDA by 42.7% to EUR97.25 million.
Due to significantly better performance in the first half of this year compared to the first half of last year, in the first nine months of 2023, net profit decreased by 9.8% to EUR 55.97 million, while revenue increased by 14.8% to EUR 392.00 million. The company’s gross profit increased by 3.0% to EUR 151.91 million, while operating profit decreased by 15.9% to EUR 79.91 million and EBITDA by 10.8% to EUR 116.63 million.
In 2023, ARX Insurance Company (ARX Kyiv) made insurance payments in the amount of UAH 1.384 billion, which is 33.07% more than a year earlier.
According to the company’s Facebook page, in December 2023, the company paid UAH 131.025 million to its clients, including UAH 67.632 million in voluntary motor hull insurance, UAH 14.456 million in compulsory motor third-party liability insurance, UAH 36.196 million in voluntary health insurance, and UAH 2.963 million in Green Card insurance.
As reported, ARX Insurance Company has been operating in the insurance market for 26 years. It is part of the international insurance holding Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited (Canada).
OLX Ukraine shared analytics from the platform on which goods and services were most in demand among Ukrainians in 2023.
The top 10* products that were most in demand among Ukrainians in 2023 and the number of responses to them:
mobile phones (more than 14 million responses to ads from users)
children’s clothing and footwear (9.8 million responses to ads),
household goods in the category “Garden and vegetable garden” (4.6 million responses to ads)
power tools (3.5 million responses to ads),
books and magazines (3.3 million responses to ads),
food and beverages (3.1 million responses to ads),
collectibles in the Antiques category (1.9 million responses to ads),
farm animals (1.9 million responses to ads),
sneakers (1.6 million responses to ads),
dishes and kitchen utensils (over 1 million responses to ads).
In the Business for Services category, the most popular ads on the platform in 2023 were: auto and motorcycle services (3.3 million responses to ads), construction and repair (4 million responses to ads), manicure and massage services from the Health and Beauty category (2.4 million responses), transportation and special equipment services (1.7 million responses), and equipment repair and maintenance services (1.3 million responses).
*The selection contains a list of products that received the most reviews on OLX in January-December 2023.
According to the opendatabot portal, in October 2023, entrepreneur Andriy Matyukha signed an agreement to purchase the VODA UA trademark. According to the agreement, all rights to the VODA UA trademark were transferred from the previous owner, Dmytro Nikiforov, to Andriy Matyukha.
In his commentary, the entrepreneur expressed his intention to develop business in Ukraine, create new jobs and support Ukrainian brands. Mr. Matyukha emphasized his readiness to invest in the country’s economy now, despite the current challenges.
VODA UA and VODA UA Carpathian Spring Highland are brands of table and medicinal waters obtained from various mountain water intakes and springs in the cleanest regions of the Carpathians. VODA UA waters are characterized by an optimal pH level of 7.4-7.6 and the absence of any physical or chemical influence, which makes them perfect by nature.
The amount of the deal remains undisclosed.
In April 2023, owner and founder Dmytro Nikiforov announced in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine that he would invest $600,000 in the production of a drink made from kombucha tea mushrooms.
Voda UA is a group of companies engaged in the extraction of Carpathian highland waters under the trademarks Voda UA, Goryanka, and Carpathian Spring Highland.
Andriy Matyukha is the founder of FAVBET betting company.
The Optima Distance School has announced that it has been forced to suspend the construction of an educational center near Kyiv due to unfounded accusations by law enforcement officials of illegal land acquisition.
Maria Miletska, founder and CEO of the Optima distance school, told Interfax-Ukraine at a press conference on Tuesday that the issue is the investigation by law enforcement agencies that accused her of illegally seizing a 4 hectare plot of land near Kyiv.
According to Miletska, the project has been suspended for at least four months.
For his part, Miletska’s lawyer, Oleksandr Protas, noted that, according to the accusations by law enforcement agencies, Miletska has no legal rights to the land plot, despite the fact that she purchased it on the secondary market at a market price.
Protas clarified that the land plot was alienated from the land fund of the Ministry of Defense six or seven years ago and has changed hands several times since then.
“As it turned out later, this land is under investigation because it became a source of enrichment for some officials. I can’t comment on whether this land was transferred to individuals legally or illegally, but Maria Miletska bought this land absolutely legally, at a market price. A company engaged in professional land search offered the land, all payments were made in non-cash form, and there were no comments from the state registrar or the notary who carried out the registration. And after the land was acquired, Maria Oleksandrivna, unfortunately, became a party to the criminal proceedings,” he said.
At the same time, the lawyer emphasized the “unprecedented pressure (on Miletska – IF-U) from the investigators who are investigating this case”.
“I was present during the searches that took place unexpectedly, I witnessed outright threats against me. There was no need to conduct such investigative actions as a search at all, because the documents that law enforcement officers needed were provided voluntarily,” he said.
Protas noted that “there are already two court decisions where Maria Oleksandrivna is recognized as an absolutely bona fide purchaser of this land.”
“The panel of judges took the side of our client that Maria Miletska did not alienate the land from the Ministry of Defense, that Miletska purchased it from individuals to whom the state had no claims until recently,” he said.
Protas clarified that the local village council distributed the land among its residents back in 2017, and until 2023, they were absolutely the legal owners of the land.
At the same time, Protas noted that his client has no grounds to apply to the ECHR so far, as all the possibilities for protection provided by national law have not been exhausted.
In turn, the founder of the Optima School, Latvian citizen Roberts Vaisla, noted that the school has already implemented several educational projects in Ukraine. These include the Optima Kids project, which provides educational materials and enables children to prepare for school, and a college that provides training in three specialties.
In addition, Optima has received Cambridge accreditation and is preparing content that allows Ukrainian children to study according to Cambridge standards and programs in Ukraine.
