The RDS road construction group, which is already represented in seven regions of Ukraine, is preparing for the expansion of its geographic footprint in the country, the co-owner of the group, Yevhen Konovalov, has said.
“Today we work in seven regions – Odesa (in the region and its central city), Mykolaiv, Kirovohrad, Cherkasy, Poltava, Vinnytsia and Kyiv regions. I would like to keep the list of the regions we are planning to enter this year a secret, but we have plans for at least three regions today. We will give more information about them soon,” he said in an exclusive interview to Interfax-Ukraine.
According to Konovalov, competition on the road construction and maintenance market has increased in recent years due to a growth in activities of Ukrainian and foreign companies.
“In order to stay afloat, we should expand the chain of our plants and production facilities. This will allow us saving the usual level of production and work load. They say that big companies are monopolizing the market, acting in collusion, but this is not true. Competition in our market is extremely high, we are competing using technologies and human resource,” the co-owner of group said.
While commenting on peculiarities of tenders in this area in Ukraine, Konovalov stressed that the cost of further maintenance should be included in the price of road construction.
“The tender amount can be very big at once, as it should include both the construction and road maintenance for a term of three to five years. Hence, tender financing should be as follows: UAH 100 million directly for the construction and another UAH 30 million for maintenance,” he said.
The co-owner of RDS also said that the group is currently discussing the issue with the management of Ukravtodor State Agency of Automobile Roads of Ukraine.
“The main thing is that the contractor, who had won a road construction tender, should be in charge of maintenance of new roads instead, and not the state represented by regional automobile road agencies with their outmoded equipment,” Konovalov said.
He added that besides maintenance the company should monitor the road quality on its own for five to ten years, as this is guaranteed by banking institutions.
“If the road service requests road repairs, then we will fix it. Otherwise, the bank with withdraw money from our account,” the co-owner of RDS said.
The Ukrainian group of companies RDS includes Kyivshliakhbud and Rostdorstroy. Its core business is construction, modernization and maintenance of roads and bridges, construction of airfield complexes.
The company is building concrete road H-14 Kropyvnytsky-Mykolaiv. As part of the reconstruction of the H-31 Dnipro-Reshetylivka highway in Poltava region, RDS is building an overpass over the railway and the section of the first concrete road in Ukraine. In 2019, the company won a World Bank tender for work on the first category highway M-03 Kyiv-Kharkiv-Dovzhansky.
As of January 2020, the company operates in seven regions of Ukraine and has ten production facilities.
The ultimate beneficial owners of RDS are Ukrainian citizens Yuriy Shumakher and Yevhen Konovalov. The charter capital of the company is UAH 5.13 million.
