One of Ukraine’s largest grain market operators, Nibulon LLC, recouped approximately $1 million in investments in a digital twin of elevators developed on the basis of the IT-Enterprise ERP system in less than a year by reducing the number of employees and grain losses.
“In conditions of staff shortages, the system allows us to reduce our dependence on manual labor… Previously, 80-100 people worked at one elevator, today there are about 20-30,” according to a joint press release issued by the companies on Monday.
It is noted that the implementation of the new system from IT-Enterprise has improved accounting accuracy and reduced grain losses by 1%.
“We have improved quantitative and qualitative accounting and automated every step of the process: the movement of grain from the moment it arrives at the elevator to shipment to the end consumer, including control of grain quality indicators and resources spent on its processing,” the release quotes Nibulon IT Director Mykola Ryasko as saying.
In addition, it was possible to ensure transparent access to grain quality parameters determined as a result of laboratory tests. In particular, the data is now available in a mobile application along with other operational information.
The agricultural holding specified that it integrated the digital twin of 23 elevators in 2024. “A digital twin is a digital copy of production that is updated in real time based on data from sensors and other sources. This allows you to effectively simulate elevator operating modes and manage all processes from anywhere in the world,” commented Oleg Shcherbatenko, CEO and founder of IT-Enterprise, on the project.
As previously reported by Andriy Vadatursky, owner and CEO of Nibulon, in 2024 the company invested $2 million in the digitization of production processes, which was directed towards the creation of a digital copy of the elevator and a mobile application. According to him, the software has been installed on all of the grain trader’s elevators and connected to a common network.
Before the war, Nibulon cultivated 82,000 hectares of land in 12 regions of Ukraine and exported agricultural products to more than 70 countries around the world. In 2021, the grain trader exported a record 5.64 million tons of agricultural products. After the war began, the company was forced to move its central office from Mykolaiv to Kyiv.
This year, Nibulon plans to increase grain exports to 4 million tons from 2.5 million tons last year, while its land bank has shrunk to 1,000 hectares and its workforce has fallen from 6,000 to less than 2,000.
According to Serbian Economist, Alcazar Energy, an international company operating in Serbia, among other countries, intends to increase its investment in Montenegro from the previously planned $200 million to $500 million, co-founder and managing partner Daniel Calderon said in an interview with the media.
According to Calderon, the company will begin construction of the 118.8 MW Bijela wind farm in the first quarter of 2026. The investment in the project will amount to about $200 million.
“We are preparing the site and purchasing equipment — this is a large and strategically important project. But this is only the first part of our investments in Montenegro,” Calderon said.
He added that over the next five years, the company’s investments could grow to half a billion dollars, and the total investment in the development of renewable energy sources in Montenegro could reach $4-5 billion by 2040.
“We expect that about 10% of these investments will go to Alcazar Energy projects, and these will be the first steps in a major energy transformation of the region,” Calderon said.
According to him, the company is considering the possibility of implementing several additional projects in Montenegro, but the details are not yet disclosed.
At the EU-Montenegro conference, 14 joint projects with European companies were presented, half of which are related to investments in wind farms, solar parks, and energy storage systems.
Alcazar Energy is an international company specializing in the development, construction, and management of renewable energy facilities.
Founded in 2014, it is headquartered in Dubai (UAE). The company is active in the MENAT region (Middle East, North Africa, Turkey) and the Balkans.
Its key projects include wind farms and solar power plants in Serbia, Jordan, Egypt, and Turkey. Alcazar recently began construction of the largest wind farm in the Western Balkans in North Macedonia.
Source: https://t.me/relocationrs/1587
The current education system in Ukraine is hindering investment and business development and needs to be changed, according to Konstantin Efimenko, president of the pharmaceutical company Biofarma Plasma.
“In order for us to implement changes and invest $500 million over seven years, the education system needs to be fundamentally changed,” he said at the Kyiv International Economic Forum (KIEF) on Thursday.
Yefimenko noted the negative consequences for primary schools of online learning, which has been practiced in Ukraine for the past six years.
“That’s why we’ve completely lost the school system. Today, we’re getting kids with absolutely zero knowledge, and we need to understand that in order to understand where we are,” he said.
Yefimenko stressed the need to invest in education and review curricula.
“We need to change the education system, we need to remove all these lessons on happiness, some psychological lessons, and bring mathematics, chemistry, and biology back to school,” said the businessman and former Minister of Transport and Communications.
In addition, Yefimenko stressed the need to upgrade university teaching laboratories.
“I visited almost all the universities in Kyiv where chemistry and biology are taught. And I will say this: all their laboratories became obsolete 34 years ago. Everything there related to chemistry, biology, and physics should be collected and thrown away. The entire university base is worse than a single Biofarma laboratory, in which we invested $25 million. But let’s think about it: a peripheral company from Bila Tserkva has a better laboratory base than all universities, including national ones. How can this be acceptable?” he said.
Yefimenko noted the high demand for qualified personnel: “We need people, but we can’t train them at the trolleybus stop. We need to buy chromatographs, we need to buy cytometers, we need to find equipment and connect it. And we don’t have that.”
“We have created two schools because we understand that there is no school education. We have created our own department at Shevchenko University. There are now 15 children studying there. I find the teachers myself and pay them myself, which costs more than $1 million a year. We are now publishing textbooks. The only thing more important than this is what is happening on the front line,” he said.
Apple Inc. intends to continue increasing investment in business development in China and further strengthening cooperation with the aim of achieving mutually beneficial development, said the company’s chief executive Tim Cook at a meeting with China’s Minister of Industry and Information Technology Li Lichen.
The minister noted that China’s massive domestic market and comprehensive industrial system have enormous potential in terms of investment and consumption, according to Xinhua News Agency.
“We hope that Apple will continue to develop the Chinese market, actively participate in China’s reindustrialization, and work with Chinese companies to promote innovative development across the entire production chain,” Li Lichen said.
He added that China is committed to a policy of openness to the outside world, intends to promote the application of intelligent technologies in industrialization and the intelligent transformation of industry, and will contribute to the creation of a favorable business environment for enterprises with foreign capital participation, including Apple.
According to the annual report published on the WSE, the Kernel agricultural holding reduced its capital investments in the 2025 financial year by almost half — to $73 million compared to $143 million a year earlier.
According to Andriy Verevsky, 2025F was one of the most difficult periods: due to poor harvests and reduced stocks, farmers held back their products in anticipation of price increases.
“The EBITDA margin fell from $121 to $66 per tonne as a result of aggressive behaviour by producers who speculated on future prices,” he said.
Kernel is Ukraine’s largest exporter of agricultural products, controlling about 10% of the global sunflower oil market and 27% of Ukrainian exports. Its main assets are terminals in the Black Sea basin, oilseed processing plants, and a logistics network across the country.
Since the beginning of 2025, companies operating in the stablecoin segment have attracted investments totaling $621.8 million, which is seven times more than the result for the whole of 2024 ($84 million), according to data from Defi Llama.
The largest round was financed by Hong Kong-based OSL Group, which received $300 million in July for international expansion.
“There is a real buzz around stablecoins right now, and this hype is entirely justified,” said Anna Shtebl, CEO of the Confirmo payment platform.
Experts attribute the growing interest to breakthroughs in the regulatory sphere. The decisive factor was the passage of the GENIUS Act in the US, which, according to MNEE CEO Ron Tarter, gave “the green light to corporate America, legalizing the industry.”
Against this backdrop, the market capitalization of stablecoins exceeded a record $297 billion. Coinbase predicts that by 2028, the figure will reach $1 trillion.
Another indicator was the IPO of issuer Circle in June: the company raised $1 billion, and its shares are now trading at $144, according to Yahoo Finance. Taking into account the financing of Circle and Figure Technologies, which Defi Llama attributes to the CeFi and RWA sectors, the total amount of funds raised exceeded $2.4 billion.
Market leaders Circle and Tether are facing increasing pressure. Fintech giant Stripe and major Wall Street players have announced their own “stablecoins.” Societe Generale’s crypto division (SG-FORGE) introduced the USDCV token, and JPMorgan confirmed the launch of the JPMD coin on the Base blockchain. According to the WSJ, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup are also considering creating their own digital assets.
“Institutional investors see stablecoins as the building blocks of digital finance,” said Zerion co-founder Evgeny Yurtaev.
In August, a number of banking associations criticized the GENIUS Act, saying it gives crypto companies an unfair advantage, particularly through the ability to pay interest to stablecoin holders. Banking lobbyists estimate that this could cause an outflow of more than $6 trillion in deposits.
Coinbase called these concerns a “myth.” The company’s policy director, Faryar Shiraz, noted that banks are trying to preserve their profits from transaction fees, which bring in about $187 billion annually.
Earlier, Standard Chartered analysts reported that the bank’s customers are increasingly preferring stablecoins over Bitcoin.
