The PRAVIO group of companies is investing in the construction and modernization of the recently acquired bankrupt cheese factory Gadyachsyru (Poltava region) to transform it into a modern export-oriented enterprise producing soft cheeses, sour milk cheese, and other products, said RAVIO founder and president Valentin Zaporoshchuk in a comment to BusinessCensor.
He noted that he acquired Gadyachsyir in February 2025.
“All of these products are in demand on the European market today. The plans include the construction of a plant with a processing capacity of up to 1,000 tons of milk per day, with an investment of EUR180 million. These will be funds raised from European banks. We have partners from Europe who are ready to join us in the project,” Zaporoshchuk said.
According to him, an audit is currently being conducted at the enterprise, which has been idle for almost five years. The company’s problems began in 2013–2014, when Gadyachsyir remained almost the only Ukrainian dairy plant that exported products to Russia and had no other stable partners. Later, the plant tried to participate in international exhibitions, but financial difficulties became inevitable.
Zaporoshchuk is convinced that the site and the region are promising for the development of a new enterprise.
“The Poltava region is one of the largest in terms of milk production and large farms. At its peak, the enterprise processed more than 2,000 tons of milk per day. And that’s not a bad volume. Of course, other enterprises have now taken over these volumes. But when we build a new enterprise with a strategic set of solutions on this site, it will be competitive, and milk producers will return to us,” added Zaporoshchuk.
The PRAVIO Group of Companies unites the Ichnia Milk Canning Plant, which specializes in milk processing and the production of canned dairy products, the Proviant Trading House, and has a raw materials division – the Mayak agricultural company, which specializes in crop production, and the Obmachivski Zirky company, which specializes in animal husbandry and crop production.
The group of companies owns the PRAVIO, MamaMilla, Milada, and Ichnia trademarks, whose products are exported to 40 countries worldwide and distributed in Ukraine through its trading house Proviant.
The Kametstal plant, part of the Metinvest mining and metallurgical group (Kamensk, Dnipropetrovsk region), has significantly increased its production of continuously cast steel billets using the stop casting technology due to increased demand.
According to the company, one of the current trends in the metal market is increased demand for continuously cast steel billets using the stop casting technology.
“Thanks to systematic measures, the team at Kametstal’s converter shop exceeded its initial targets for this year and achieved a monthly production of 15,000 tons of high-quality billets at the continuous casting machine (CCM-1), which is twice as much as last year’s monthly production volumes,” the press release states.
At the same time, it is noted that the development and improvement of steel casting technology using stop mechanisms on the continuous casting machine (CCM) No. 1 remains in the focus of the company’s specialists, as it allows them to obtain metal with higher requirements for chemical composition and macrostructure, which yields higher profits than conventional billets. One of the primary goals set by the steelmakers is to increase the production of billets using this technology, and they are persistently pursuing this goal. This year, 58,433 thousand tons of high-quality billets have already been cast on the first machine, thus exceeding the annual production volume for 2024 by more than 5 thousand tons in eight months.
“Among the priority measures for achieving ambitious goals is the development and improvement of the parameters for the automatic start of the machine’s streams during stop casting, which has a positive effect on the quality and productivity of casting by minimizing the human factor in the process. While at the beginning of 2025, successful starts of the continuous casting machine in “Auto Start” mode accounted for almost 80%, today, technologists are already performing more than 90% of successful starts without switching to manual mode,” the plant emphasizes.
Also this year, as part of the program to upgrade the main steelmaking equipment, an investment project was implemented – during the first stage of reconstruction at continuous casting machine No. 1, frequency converters and cable and wire products were replaced, and the software was updated. As a result, the operation of the pulling stoves has improved, and thus the smoothness of pouring and the stability of launches.
After the implementation of this investment project, the first machine achieved a record production of high-quality hot-rolled coils in July – 16,159 thousand tons, while last year the maximum monthly production of such products was 8,256 thousand tons.
An important vector is the increase in the seriality of melts during stop casting of steel. Additional technological measures have made it possible to achieve an average seriality of almost six melts this year, while the average seriality in 2024 was 5.3 melts.
As reported, Metinvest will invest more than UAH 2.5 billion in the modernization of Kametstal in 2025.
Kametstal is part of the Metinvest Group.
According to the results of 2024 and the first quarter of 2025, IMC (Industrial Milk Company) is in good financial condition, intends to reduce its debt below $20 million by the end of the year and will return to paying dividends, IMC CEO Alexander Verzhikhovsky said in an interview with the Polish edition of parkiet.com.
He noted that as of the end of March 2025, IMC had $44.7 million in cash and cash equivalents, which is 73% more than a year earlier. This allows the agricultural holding to reduce its financial debt as planned.
According to the CEO of the agricultural holding, IMC’s debt as of the end of 2024 amounted to more than $23 million, compared to $46 million at the end of 2023.
“This year, we are striving to further reduce our debt and plan to bring it down to below $20 million. At the same time, we have returned to paying dividends and are working to share our profits with shareholders in the form of significant dividends next year,” the IMC CEO emphasized.
In addition, he said that in March 2025, IMC completed investments in its own rolling stock. In total, since 2024, the company has invested about $22 million in the purchase of a fleet of 300 grain carriers.
Verzhykhovsky explained that owning grain cars allows the agricultural holding to largely abandon the use of leased cars for grain transportation to ports. “Currently, IMC can transport up to 80% of our annual grain production with its own railcars.
In addition, in 2024, the agricultural holding invested heavily in the renewal and modernization of its fleet, which directly affects the production processes related to soil preparation, sowing campaign, their efficiency and optimization of operations.
“IMC intends to maintain annual investments in equipment, technology and infrastructure modernization at the level of $10-12 million. The company does not plan to issue shares or increase debt. Investments will be made at the expense of own funds,” summarized IMC CEO.
IMC Agroholding is an integrated group of companies operating in Sumy, Poltava and Chernihiv regions (north and center of Ukraine) in the crop production, elevators and warehouses segments. The land bank is 116 thousand hectares, storage capacity is 554 thousand tons, with a harvest of 864 thousand tons in 2024.
IMC ended 2024 with a net profit of $54.54 million compared to a net loss of $21.03 million in 2023. Revenue increased by 52% to $211.29 million, gross profit quadrupled to $109.10 million, and normalized EBITDA increased 25 times to $86.11 million.
In 2025, Metinvest Mining and Metallurgical Group will invest more than UAH 2.5 billion to modernize Kametstal, a steel plant built at the facilities of Dnipro Metallurgical Plant (Kamianske, Dnipro region).
According to the press release, KAMETSTAL has launched a record investment program for 2025.
It is noted that in difficult wartime, KAMETSTAL, along with other Metinvest Group companies, continues to work systematically on construction and reconstruction to improve production reliability and efficiency. Since the first days of January 2025, the company has started implementing this year’s investment program with a total planned budget of over UAH 2.5 billion.
Among its most important items is the overhaul of blast furnace No. 9, which will account for almost a third of the program’s budget, as its primary objectives are to maintain the efficiency of the main equipment and technological processes to ensure stable production of commercial products.
Another priority is a pilot investment project to build an alternative power plant with solar panels. No such projects have been implemented at Metinvest’s enterprises before. Pre-project studies are currently underway, and practical ways to address this new challenge are being identified.
“This year, a record-breaking total budget of $59.8 million is being invested in the program, a significant part of which is aimed at maintaining and updating the main production equipment, which is a springboard for further development and modernization of the enterprise. In total, we plan to implement 114 investment projects of varying importance during the year. Key equipment will be overhauled in the main production shops. The resumption of production will allow the company to renew its presence and enter new markets for this product, thus generating additional profit,” said Mikhail Koptev, Director of Capital Construction and Investments at Kametstal.
The company’s plans to modernize the energy sector infrastructure include a significant focus on the construction of water pipelines. KAMETSTAL’s water and gas pipelines are long-distance communications that require systemic upgrades. In the near future, we plan to install water pipes for the blast furnace shop.
The 2025 program also includes the start of construction of the first start-up complex for a large-scale project to build a new blast furnace gas collector, and one of the most important reliability projects is the modernization of the drive control system for continuous casting machine (CCM) No. 1.
“Kametstal was created on the basis of PJSC Dnipro Coke and Chemical Plant (DCKhZ) and PJSC Dnipro Metallurgical Plant (DMK).
According to the 2020 report of Metinvest Group’s parent company, Metinvest B.V. (Netherlands) owned 100% of the shares in DCCP.
NEQSOL Holding, the owner of Ukraine’s second largest mobile operator VF Ukraine (Vodafone Ukraine), has paid UAH 3.94 billion to the state budget of Ukraine in full for the purchase of United Mining and Chemical Company (UMCC, Kyiv) at a privatization tender.
“The winner of the auction paid in full for the state-owned stake in the country’s largest producer of titanium raw materials. The new owner has also undertaken important investment commitments: to invest at least UAH 400 million in the modernization of production, which will ensure the further development of the enterprise,” the SPF said in a statement on Monday.
For his part, NEQSOL Holding’s Regional Director Volodymyr Lavrenchuk noted that the international group of companies, which does business in 11 countries, is taking the steps required by law to complete the privatization process.
“As a strategic investor, we have already started negotiations with a number of specialized companies from the US, Australia, the UK and Canada to attract the best international experience to develop a new strategy for UMCC. This strategy provides for the fulfillment of privatization obligations, deep modernization and expansion in global markets,” he stressed.
The State Property Fund noted that the process of large-scale privatization continues, and on December 19, 2024, 100% of the state-owned share of the nationalized building materials producer Aerok LLC will be put up for sale at an online auction in the Prozorro.Sale electronic trading system with a starting price of UAH 965.3 million.
The SPF reminded that, including the sale of the Ukraina Hotel earlier this fall, the total amount of proceeds from large-scale privatization this year has already exceeded UAH 6.4 billion.
As reported, Cemin Ukraine LLC, controlled by NEQSOL Holding, was the only bidder for the purchase of the UMCC at the auction scheduled for October 9: it offered UAH 3 billion 938 million 351,581 thousand at the initial price of UAH 3 billion 899,358 million.
NEQSOL Holding is founded and owned by Azerbaijani citizen Nasib Hasanov. According to the holding’s website, in the 1990s, during the collapse of the Soviet Union, he started providing brokerage services, initially engaged in the supply of chemicals, developed business in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and other countries of the former USSR, and then in the supply of equipment for the oil and gas industry in the region.
After that, Hasanov used the accumulated capital to invest in the oil and gas industry of Azerbaijan, establishing his own company in this field. The holding’s enterprises in the energy sector are consolidated into two groups: Nobel Oil E&P (UK) Limited (trading name Nobel Upstream), which is engaged in exploration and production in the UK, the US and Azerbaijan, and Nobel Energy, which provides diversified integrated services to international oil and gas operators in the Caspian region and beyond.
The holding entered the telecommunications industry in 2005 by acquiring Bakcell, the first Azerbaijani telecommunications company, and in 2019 NEQSOL Holding bought Vodafone Ukraine. The holding also invests in various startups.
In the late 2000s, the group expanded its business portfolio by making a name for itself in the construction services and materials market, producing cement and related materials. Norm, founded in 2013, is the largest cement producer in the South Caucasus. Before the war, NEQSOL Holding was close to buying Ivano-Frankivskcement, Ukraine’s largest cement producer, but later abandoned the deal.
Currently, the group employs over 12,000 people in 11 countries, including the UK, USA, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, the Netherlands, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and the UAE. The company’s headquarters are located in Amsterdam, Baku and Kyiv.
UMCC started its actual operations in August 2014, when the Ukrainian government decided to transfer the property complexes of Vilnohirsk Mining and Metallurgical Plant (VGMK, Dnipropetrovska oblast) and Irshansk Mining and Processing Plant (IGOK, Zhytomyrska oblast) to its management. Previously, these plants were leased from Dmitry Firtash’s structures.
In August 2016, the government included UMCC in the list of companies to be privatized in 2017. The privatization was postponed several times, most recently due to Covid and quarantine.
Before the war, in the second half of 2021, the SPF put UMCC up for auction three times with a starting price of UAH 3.7 billion. The last auction, scheduled for December 20, did not take place as only two bids were submitted, one of which was rejected due to non-compliance with the law. At that time, one bidder was not enough for the sale. This was preceded by a statement by the privatization adviser BDO Corporate Finance that international companies were not ready to participate in the auction due to the lack of guarantees of protection of large investments by the Cabinet of Ministers. At that time, the SPF and the advisor appealed to the government to provide such guarantees, but to no avail.
In 2023, UMCC’s revenue decreased by 15.4% to UAH 1 billion 946.68 million, and its net loss amounted to UAH 481.35 million against a net profit of UAH 13.37 million a year earlier. According to YouControl, in January-September this year, the company increased its revenue by 88.8% to UAH 2 billion 295.5 million, receiving UAH 89.1 million in net profit against UAH 274.2 million in net loss for the same period last year.
Metinvest Group’s Zaporizhstal Iron and Steel Works has modernized the transfer trolleys between the departments of its Cold Rolling Shop (CRS), allocating UAH 2 million for this purpose.
According to the company, the upgrade took four months to complete, and the transportation of rolled products from one department of the Cold Rolling Shop to another has become safer and more efficient.
It is specified that the trolleys were replaced with more modern electrical equipment, additional warning beacons, as well as optical and radiation sensors were installed.
“Zaporizhstal is one of the largest industrial enterprises in Ukraine, whose products are in great demand among consumers both in the domestic market and in many countries around the world.
“Zaporizhstal is in the process of integration into Metinvest Group, whose major shareholders are System Capital Management (71.24%) and Smart Holding Group (23.76%).
Metinvest Holding LLC is the management company of Metinvest Group.
