The RDS road construction group invested almost UAH 170 million in the upgrade of its machinery fleet in 2019 and ready to enter the road construction markets of Poland and Romania, the co-owner of the group, Yuriy Shumakher, has said.
“The acquisition of modern machines, mechanisms and vehicles cost the company UAH 167.16 million. For several years now, we have been investing annually about $8 million in the renewal of our fleet of road machines,” he said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
According to him, in 2019 the company’s fleet was expanded with 114 units of road machines and equipment.
Shumakher said that RDS uses its own funds, funds borrowed from Ukrainian banks and leasing companies to upgrade its fleet. Also, part of the equipment is bought through financing of manufacturing companies such as Wirtgen and Zeppelin.
The co-owner of the group said that RDS purchases mainly foreign equipment from leaders in modern engineering.
“We have ambitions to participate in tenders abroad,” Shumakher said.
According to him, unlike Ukraine, tenders in Europe have very strict criteria and a mandatory requirement, in particular, is experience in the European Union for at least three to five years.
The Rostdorstroy group of road construction companies, as part of expanding its business, carries out rebranding and will be renamed RDS, co-owner of the group Yuriy Shumakher has said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
“We decided that the name of the company Rostdorstroy is long and heavy, especially for the European market, in which we, in addition to the Ukrainian market, want to be represented,” he said, noting that rebranding will allow the company to develop more actively in international markets.
According to the expert, ubiquitous digitalization and a huge flow of information force brands and companies to grow rapidly, in particular changing their visual image.
“Everything is becoming more simplified, easy,” he said.
He noted that initially the company was created as the Rost (Growth) investment group for construction of housing and commercial real estate.
“When we decided to invest in roads in 2005, we called the project Rostdorstroy. Now we work in the field of road construction and are already in the top three companies in this market,” he described the evolutionary path of development of the company and its brands.
The Ukrainian group of companies RDS includes Kyivshliakhbud and Rostdorstroy. The core business is construction, reconstruction 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-Dolzhansky.
As of January 2020, the company operates in seven regions of Ukraine and has ten production bases.
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
