Nova Poshta Global, part of the Nova Poshta group of companies, has created an additional hub for international shipments in Lviv: it launched charter flights to Lviv airport and opened the second central sorting station.
According to Nova Poshta, the first charter flight from the United States flew to Lviv in early December. On board were more than 15,000 items of the NP Shopping service with a total weight of over 30 tonnes. Nova Posta Global plans to operate flights from the United States regularly, twice a week: one flight to Lviv and one to Kyiv.
In addition, the company plans to carry out charter flights from China both to Lviv and Kyiv. In particular, on December 6, a flight with departures from the Chinese online store AliExpress, on board of which there were 60,000 parcels with a total weight of 20 tonnes, already arrived at Boryspil International Airport.
“Soon we expect the arrival of two more flights, which will deliver about 20 more tonnes of cargo,” the company said.
Previously, the company’s flights with international departures arrived only at Boryspil airport, and went through customs clearance and sorting at the central station in Kyiv.
Since the beginning of this year, Nova Poshta Global has more than doubled its volumes, delivering 5.7 million shipments: an increase that has put additional strain on the sorting station.
The third container train from China on a new route, which delivered 41 forty-foot containers with shoes, non-ferrous metal products, medical and pharmaceutical equipment, consumer goods and other combined cargo, arrived at the Kyiv-Lisky station.
The press service of Ukrzaliznytsia reported last week, the company has already received 17 trains from different regions of China. These trains run from Wuhan and Jinannan and carry 43 containers with various cargoes: magnesium sulfate, equipment, aluminum frames, disposable syringes, PET bottles and light industrial products.
Trains cover the distance of transportation, which is more than 9,000 km across the territory of four countries, in 15 days.
Ukrzaliznytsia will continue receiving trains from China according to a new logistics scheme with a further increase in their frequency.
“The introduction of new logistics schemes for the transportation of goods allows attracting additional cargo flows and opens up new opportunities for the users of transport services to deliver goods to their destination. This work is carried out together with the solution of pressing issues regarding tariff policy, technical re-equipment, improving the technology of the transportation process and services,” the company said.
Ukrzaliznytsia added that its branch Lisky center of transport service plans to continue active work on identifying new promising routes for container trains.
The Chinese company Sinohydro Corporation Limited intends to file a claim in international arbitration for the termination of the contract for the reconstruction of the bypass road around Zhytomyr by the State Agency of Automobile Roads of Ukraine (Ukravtodor).
According to the company’s statement, Sinohydro considers it unfair that Ukravtodor, having failed to effectively fulfill its contractual obligations, unilaterally decided to terminate the contract, while the Dispute Settlement Council (created under the contract together with Ukravtodor in May 2020) is still considering disputes surrounding this contract and has already ruled on some of them, allowing Sinohydro to renew the contract.
Sinohydro says the untimely transfer of a land plot for public use by Ukravtodor, the introduction of a number of design changes not provided for in the contract, failure to fulfill payment obligations, as well as force majeure in the form of the COVID-19 epidemic and many other factors influenced the project schedule and led to a violation of the terms of work.
“Since June 2020, facing an unfavorable situation caused by the fact that Ukravtodor did not complete the interim payment for construction work on time, and the continuing impact of the COVID-19 epidemic, Sinohydro has advanced over EUR 5 million to meet its contractual obligations and reduce the delay,” the company said.
It is emphasized that in comparison with other sections of roads under construction in Ukraine at the same time, this project is being implemented at a rather fast pace and is already nearing completion.
“Under the circumstances, the Dispute Settlement Council decided on the first contract dispute initiated by Sinohydro in September 2020. It agreed to extend the contractor’s deadline for construction work by 87 days. However, when the Council began considering at least four disputes over damages to Sinohydro, Ukravtodor unexpectedly announced the termination of the contract,” the report says.
At the end of the fourth five-year period, the United States International Trade Commission (USITC) will revise anti-dumping restrictions on the supply of Certain Cut-to-length Carbon Steel Plate to the American market from Ukraine, Russia and China.
According to the USITC report in the Federal Register bulletin, the start of the review is set for November 2, the deadline for responses from participants in the review procedure is December 2, 2020.
During the revision procedure, USITC will determine the possibility of abolishing anti-dumping duties on these products from China, as well as ending the suspension of the investigation on this type of rental from the Russian Federation and Ukraine – to what extent this may lead to the continuation or renewal of damage to local manufacturers of these products in the United States.
On October 30, the Ukrainian company WindFarm and the Chinese company PowerChina signed a contract on the joint implementation of a project for the construction of an 800 MW wind farm with a capacity of over $1 billion in Manhush and Nikolske districts of Donetsk region, Board Chairman of the Ukrainian Wind Energy Association (UWEA) Andriy Konechenkov has said.
“The specifics of this project is that it does not provide for a feed-in tariff. This is the first robin in the electricity market, the first project that will compete with conventional generation in real conditions,” he told Interfax-Ukraine.
At the same time, according to him, the project provides for local content policy or local components, which gives rise to the development of national wind energy production.
“How the payment for this local component will be carried out remains to be decided,” Konechenkov said.
He also said that the Chinese company is participating in this project “as an investor in a large, transparent project that does not depend on the ffeed-in tariff,” which, according to him, has already exhausted itself given the crisis of non-payments.
“It is necessary to start working on new technologies. Moreover, the issue is related to the reintegration of the regions, the launch of new environment-friendly production,” the board chairman of the UWEA said, noting that investors are currently not considering the possibility of participating in “green auctions” due to weak predictability of conditions and timing of their implementation.
At the same time, he expressed the hope that the experience and capabilities of the Chinese investor will contribute to the implementation of the project as soon as possible, noting that PowerChina is ready to work on the basis of the support of a domestic manufacturer and financing of European wind turbines.
Konechenkov said that this project, which has been in preparation for about a year, will become the largest onshore wind farm in Europe.
According to the data on the UWEA website, PowerChina, which specializes in the design and construction of energy and transport facilities, is in the top 100 largest companies in the country and in the top 500 largest companies in the world. In particular, it owns the Three Gorges, the world’s largest hydroelectric dam with a capacity of 22.5 GW.
The WindFarm team has developed a portfolio of wind power plants with a total capacity of 1.3 GW, of which more than 400 MW have already been put into operation.
Both companies are members of the UWEA.
Ukraine and China have signed a program of cooperation in the field of aerospace for 2021-2025, which consists of 69 joint projects with a total value of contracts of more than $70 million.
As reported on the website of the State Space Agency of Ukraine (SSAU), the program was signed at a meeting of the Ukrainian-Chinese subcommittee on cooperation in space of the Commission on Cooperation between the Governments of Ukraine and China on October 22. The Ukrainian side was chaired by SSAU Head Volodymyr Usov, the Chinese – by Administrator of the Chinese National Space Administration (СNSA) Zhang Kejian.
The cooperation program will be the main one for joint activities of the two countries in space exploration in the medium term.
During the meeting, an agreement on the establishment of a joint laboratory of space science was also signed and an agreement to strengthen the exchange of information on space activities of the two countries was reached.
The next meeting of the subcommittee on cooperation in the field of space is scheduled for 2021 in China.
