Cyprus T.A.S. Overseas Investments Limited from Sergiy Tigipko’s TAS Group intends to acquire over 25% in Austrian TransAnt GmbH (Linz), a joint venture (JV) established by Austrian ÖBB Rail Cargo Group and voestalpine Stahl GmbH to produce innovative and cost-effective railway freight cars.
According to a message of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMCU) on its website, the agency has already provided T.A.S. Overseas Investments Limited with appropriate authorization based on its application and applications from TransAnt and voestalpine Stahl.
In addition, the Cypriot Competition Authority also announced that it had received a notification in connection with the proposed acquisition by TAS Overseas Investments Limited of a share in a charter capital of TransAnt GmbH on January 24 this year.
TransAnt GmbH is a joint venture established at the end of 2020 between Rail Cargo Austria Aktiengesellschaft and voestalpine Stahl GmbH with the aim of operating in the rail freight sector. At this stage, TransAnt is not engaged in commercial activities. However, after the completion of this transaction, it is expected to be actively engaged in production, development, supply, sale and lease of “flex” wagons and superstructures for the transport of goods in the industrial sector.
Rail Cargo Group originally announced plans for parity ownership in the JV with voestalpine, but currently holds a 19.8% share, according to the Austrian register, while voestalpine holds 80.2%.
In this regard, the AMCU classifies TransAnt GmbH and voestalpine Stahl GmbH and their related companies as a single business entity – VAS Group. It is a global steel and technology group operating in the automotive, consumer, aerospace, oil and gas, and rail industries, which is listed on the Vienna Stock Exchange and has no ultimate beneficial owners.
TAS Group was founded in 1998 by businessman Sergiy Tigipko. Its business interests cover the financial sector (banking and insurance segments) and pharmacy, as well as industry, real estate, and venture projects.
The Kiev City Council has approved changes to the Program of Social and Economic Development of Kiev in 2021-2023, directing the balance of unused subventions from the state budget in the amount of 256,4 million UAH for building Podolsky Bridge across the Dnieper.
According to the press service of the Kyiv City Council, the corresponding decision at the meeting on February 9 was supported by 75 deputies.
According to the message, unused means of subvention were intended for maintenance and development of highways.
In addition, 23.1 mln UAH of unused subvention for social and economic development of certain territories were aimed at capital construction and repair of infrastructure objects of the capital, including 5.4 mln UAH for reconstruction of the stadium of special school № 10.
Also 17.7 million UAH were sent for capital repairs: 5.2 million UAH for the square near the theater named after Ivan Franko, 6.9 million UAH and 3.7 million UAH for repairs of two kindergartens and one school in Darnitsky district, 1.9 million UAH for the repair of schools in Solomensky district of the capital.
The construction of a building technology campus of Kingspan, an Irish manufacturer of energy-efficient insulation technology, is scheduled to start in 2024, and the company has already started looking for a site in the Lviv region because of its proximity to the border, according to a UkraineInvest press release on Thursday.
According to it, the campus will include six production areas, including the production of insulation materials and district heating solutions. The campus will produce construction products with high added value. The project includes a green, low-carbon manufacturing facility.
Kingspan is reportedly investing more than EUR200 million in the construction. Construction will take about five years. The implementation of the project will create 600-800 new jobs.
Kingspan was founded in 1965 in Ireland, specialized in production of building solutions for building envelopes (roofs, walls, facades), as well as protective walls, cold doors, high-tech solid urethane and solid phenolic thermal insulation for roofs, walls, floors and pipelines. It operates 200 production facilities around the world. The company came to Ukraine in 2005.
In April 2022, Kingspan announced the completion of its exit from the Russian business. Russia accounted for less than 1% of the company’s global operations. It also donated $750,000 to UNICEF to set up five Blue Dot centers to help refugees on the Ukrainian border.
UkraineInvest, the Investment Attraction and Support Office of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, provides organizational and advisory support for investors to prepare projects for implementation.
Kiev will continue the construction of a pedestrian bridge from the Obolonskaya embankment to Obolonsky Island, which has been carried out since 2020 at the expense of patronage funds and for which no money from the city budget is used, said Kiev Mayor Vitaly Klitschko.
“Kiev received funds to continue construction from the Metropolis of Greater Paris. These are earmarked funds that foreign partners allocated to us for the construction of this particular facility,” Klitschko wrote in his Telegram channel on Tuesday.
According to him, by the beginning of 2023 have already installed three supports of the bridge and began installing the fourth, purchased materials.
“For the funds provided by the Metropolis of Greater Paris, will complete the installation of the fourth pillar of the bridge, purchase and install auxiliary and partially run structures, purchase steel structures,” – said the mayor of Kiev.
He specified that according to the project the bridge will be based on four piers, two of which are located in the strait. The width of the pedestrian object will be 4 m, length – 164 m.
“The bridge will be comfortable for the movement of small groups of people. The passage of small vessels in the bay of Obolon facility will not interfere. Obolonsky island will be equipped as a modern recreation area for Kiev citizens with the preservation of flora and fauna “- summed up Klitschko.
KMZ Industries (Karlovskiy Machine Building Plant, KMZ, Poltava region) at the end of 2022 has manufactured and delivered the equipment necessary for the completion of construction of the “dry” port of Alebor Group located on the territory of Hlybotskiy community (Chernivtsi region) near the border with Romania.
According to the Facebook page of the engineering company, KMZ is ordering construction of the first stage of the export grain terminal with a capacity of 30 000 tons and loading capacity of 300 tons per hour.
Altogether Alebor Group is planning several stages of terminal construction for 2023-2024. In the long term, the “Vadul-Siret Terminal” project will transship Ukrainian agricultural products into narrow gauge railroad wagons for subsequent shipment to the Romanian port of Constanta, thus giving exporters an alternative to Ukrainian sea ports.
As reported, the head of Hlybock community Gregory Vanzuryak in August 2022, wrote that the facility will be equipped with silos up to 200 thousand tons and a capacity of handling up to 3 million tons / year.
He said the first phase of the $20 million project, which will be completed in January 2023, will store up to 60,000 tons of crops and transship up to 1.2 million tons of grain annually to Romania.
Vanzuryak noted that the total construction cost of the facility will be $40 million.
Alebor Group in July-2022 announced the purchase of land for the construction of a terminal for transshipment of crops from the wide Ukrainian railroad track to the narrow European railroad track, as well as an elevator with a total capacity of 60 thousand hectares.
Alebor Group was founded in 2014. Its founder is entrepreneur Alexey Kustov.
In addition to Voronivtsi KPP, the group includes Krystyniv KPP (Cherkasy region) and KPP Chestne (Odessa region), as well as trucking companies Boleko (Cherkasy region), Autoera (Odessa region) and a trading division. The total fleet of the companies amounts to 210 grain carriers.
Before the full-scale Russian invasion into Ukraine, the group of companies had the capacity to export 1.2 million tons of grains and oilseeds per year. The total capacity of the three elevators is 315 thousand tons of simultaneous storage.
KMZ Industries produces flat-bottom and cone-bottom silos, flour storage silos, Brice-Baker mine dryers (British design) and chipboards (Ukrainian design), transport equipment (elevator, chain, belt and screw conveyors), separators for grain cleaning, installs and automates elevator equipment and technological processes in grain storages.
In 2020 the plant increased revenue by 35% to 395.26 million hryvnias and made 5.05 million hryvnias of net profit against a loss of 25.37 million hryvnias. In 2021, it planned to increase production by 30-50%.
As of the fourth quarter of 2021, Dragon Capital Investments Limited (Cyprus), whose ultimate beneficiary is Tomas Fiala, owns 80% of KMZ JSC shares, while Variant Agro Bud LLC holds 20%.
By the end of this year, metal prices and logistics costs have dropped significantly, which should help the demand
Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine has had a significant impact on the entire economy and the construction industry in particular. However, after a few months of war, some of the customers have already returned to the construction of commercial objects that were frozen at the beginning of the full-scale war or damaged as a result of the hostilities.
Current situation
Rauta is a leading supplier of modern solutions for quickly erected buildings – sandwich panels, ventilated metal facades, steel frames, load-bearing profiles, etc. The company offers services in design, installation of supporting and enclosing structures, as well as general contracting on objects of any complexity. The main focus of the company’s business is the import of Ruukki products for commercial construction projects. We use production facilities located in Poland, Estonia and Ukraine.
After the beginning of the active war phase due to a significant decrease in demand for our products the company’s business was significantly reoriented. We began to be approached by clients with requests to rebuild buildings destroyed in the fighting. Having a deep understanding of the technologies and principles of reconstruction, we began to actively engage in the restoration of buildings and made it a separate line of business. Whereas before February 24 the company was restoring only one building in Kiev, by the end of 2022 we had implemented 7 projects in three cities of Ukraine, and the start of reconstruction of several more is planned for 2023.
Growth against the backdrop of a falling market
In 2021 there was a situation on the market when the demand for Ruukki products greatly exceeded the capacity of production and the factories were not able to fulfill all orders. Starting from 24 February, the number of orders for new construction projects decreased sharply, and the main deliveries were for objects that began construction last year. Fortunately, almost all of our sandwich panel customers continued to build facilities. Among them are low-temperature warehouse and business center in Kiev, dairy farm and dairy plant in Ternopil region. Therefore, in 2022 Rauta has a 40% year-on-year decrease in sales, which is a relatively good indicator against the background of a more than 70% fall in the sandwich panel market. At the same time, thanks to the growth of the construction and general contracting services area, the company’s total revenue increased by 7% compared to 2021.
Price waves
Ruukki products are made only from European rolled steel, the price of which rose to a peak in August 2021 and halved in early 2022. At the same time in the cost of panels, galvanized steel with polymer coating accounts for about 25%.
At the same time, given the substantial increase in the cost of transportation services and the rise in the euro, the price of imported sandwich panels for the year increased by 50% in hryvnia equivalent. Nevertheless now there is a tendency in the market to considerable decrease of transport cost as well as inertial fall of world steel prices that in the nearest perspective can lead to reduction of sandwich-panels prices by 15-20%.
The main method of delivery in the market of metal construction is road transport. In 2021 the cost of delivery by truck from Poland to Kiev was about 65 thousand UAH. In the spring of 2022 delivery from Poland due to rising fuel prices and limited supply of transport has doubled in price, and in December 2022 was back to the prewar level.
In 2021 the peak cost of load-bearing steel reached almost 70 thousand UAH per ton, mainly due to the high cost of rolled steel. At the end of 2022 due to the decline in metal prices by almost half the cost of steel decreased by about 23% – to 54 thousand UAH per ton.
Recovery Opportunities.
In the spring of 2022, when the company had less workload on the main projects, we have developed a technology for the construction of frameless houses made of sandwich panels, which can be used for ultra-fast construction of houses and cottage towns. To demonstrate the benefits of this technology, we plan to install two demonstration frameless houses near Kiev. For this purpose we have already made house sets in Poland for 20 and 40 square meters houses and we are going to install them in spring. Now we can see the interest in this technology on the part of institutional funds and private investors in the segment of cottage building, which will grow rapidly after Ukraine’s victory.
Another innovation of ours is the development of technology for construction of multistoried buildings using sandwich panels as outer walls, which allows a developer to get up to 5% more space.
In general it can be noted that the technology of rapid construction with steel solutions has a great perspective in the reconstruction of commercial real estate – where the investor understands: the sooner the business is built, the sooner it will begin to bring income.
CONSTRUCTION, DEMAND, galvanized steel, RAUTA, STEEL, STEEL CONSTRUCTION
