The United States Agency for International Development USAID will provide Ukraine with special refrigerators necessary for transporting and storing the Pfizer vaccine, the press service of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine said.
“To support Ukraine’s national response, USAID is helping prepare for Pfizer and other approved vaccines by providing direct support for ultra-cold chain storage/transportation and supporting public communications efforts to provide accurate information about vaccines,” the message reads.
As reported, Ukraine signed an agreement with the American pharmaceutical corporation Pfizer for the supply of 10 million doses of vaccine against COVID-19, which was agreed in February by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and chief executive officer of Pfizer Albert Bourla.
The government support for building berry refrigerators by agricultural cooperatives is ineffective and will not be effective without a permit to compensate the cost of imported equipment, Head of the Ukrsadvinprom nongovernmental organization Volodymyr Pechko has said.
He said that the initiative of the Agricultural Policy and Food Ministry to permit compensations for imported refrigerators for agricultural cooperatives would not improve the situation with refrigerators, as cooperatives are not peculiar for this sector.
“To use the program, producers should unite in a cooperative, and this is very complicated. People cannot agree on whose territory a refrigerator is built,” he told Interfax-Ukraine.
As reported, Ukraine’s Agricultural Policy and Food Ministry plans to permit compensations to agricultural cooperatives for purchase of refrigerators for berries and fruits. The Cabinet of Ministers will consider the appropriate changes in the rules of using funds on government support to the agricultural and industrial complex in the near future.
Earlier, Ukrsadvinprom called on the Agricultural Policy and Food Ministry of Ukraine to adapt the state-funded program compensating expenses on construction of fruit refrigerators to berry farms. The criterion of the capacity of this equipment for compensation from the national budget from 500 tonnes, as provided for by the current government decree, should be relaxed to 50-100 tonnes, they said.
KTD Group, which manufactures household appliances in Ukraine under the Saturn, ST and Laretti brands, plans to launch the conveyed assembly of refrigerators at a factory in Cherkasy in one or two months, President of the KTD Group Oleksandr Hromyko has said. “We have already launched the pilot manufacture of refrigerators, and in a month or two we are launching an assembly line for 300,000 refrigerators per year. We buy metal from Metinvest,” Hromyko said at a round table on labor migration issues in Kyiv on Tuesday . As was earlier reported, the initial launch of the plant with a gradual increase in output to 300,000 refrigerators annually was scheduled for the summer of 2017, but the deadline was shifted for 2018. Hromyko explained the time was needed to change the project for the incorporation of energy-saving technologies, as the plant is to manufacture A++ and A+++ energy-saving refrigerators.
Then the launch was rescheduled due to the need to resolve all emerging technical issues, especially considering the complexity of production.
Earlier, Hromyko said that Ukrainian manufacturers could replace Chinese factories for European companies, since locating production facilities in Ukraine reduces delivery periods and avoids duties due to the free trade zone with the EU.
“What we lack and what we saw, for example, in Slovakia or Turkey, is certainly the support of the manufacturer by the government. In Slovakia, for example, if I had opened a similar plant and created 500 jobs, I would have had from 30% to 50% of the cost of equipment compensated,” he said during the round table.
KTD Group has been working in the home appliances market for over 20 years. It is a major supplier of household appliances of various brands in the European market, and produces some of its goods at factories in China, Turkey and Taiwan. According to its website, during this period, offices were opened in 13 countries, namely in the United Arab Emirates and Tunisia.
The Dragon Capital investment company estimated the group’s share in the Ukrainian market of household appliances at 14%.
In 2009, KTD Group opened a Kupava semi-automatic washing machine plant in Kaniv. Then the plant’s assortment was expanded to produce various small appliances under the Saturn trademark. The group’s second plant is located in Cherkasy, where convectors, heaters, electric furnaces are produced.
In Ukraine, the largest producer of refrigerators was the Nord plant in Donetsk, which had to stop in 2016 as it was unable to work in the occupied area in eastern Ukraine, and it started manufacturing refrigerators to China.
