Business news from Ukraine

“Avtomagistral-Pivden” wins tender for construction of transport interchange for UAH 1.936 bln

Avtomagistral-Pivden LLC has won a tender for the construction of a transport interchange in Mykolaiv region with a bid of UAH 1.936 billion.

According to the announcement on Prozorro, the customer was the Service for Infrastructure Restoration and Development in Mykolaiv region. The expected cost of the works was UAH 2.28 billion.

The Eurotransmost consortium also participated in the tender with a final offer of UAH 1.937 billion.

The works under the tender include the construction of an interchange at different levels across the Southern Bug in Mykolaiv to the public road of national importance M-14 (Odesa-Melitopol-Novoazovsk). The length of the road surface is 8.3 km. The expected completion date is April 30, 2025.

According to Prozorro, the tender was held on February 8, and on March 6, Avtomagistral-Pivden published a notice of intent to conclude a contract based on the results of the tender.

Avtomagistral-Pivden LLC has been on the market since 2004. It designs and builds highways, bridges, interchanges, airfield complexes, and hydraulic structures. The company’s owner is listed in Opendatabot as Oleksandr Boyko. According to the financial results for 2022, the company’s net profit amounted to UAH 241.9 million, and net income was UAH 7.5 billion.

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Greece offers to use Aegean ports to transport Ukrainian grain

Greece proposes to use its ports in the Aegean Sea as a corridor for the export of Ukrainian grain, the Greek newspaper Kathimerini reports.

According to the report, the Greek government has already discussed its proposals with partners in the EU to transport Ukrainian grain through the ports of Thessaloniki and Alexandropoulos. The grain could be transported to the ports by rail through Romania and Bulgaria, and then loaded onto Greek commercial vessels.

The problem in this regard is the limited capacity of the railroad network in northern Greece, which is located on the border with Bulgaria and Turkey and escaped destruction during the recent floods.

A “green light” for Ukrainian exports via Greece could also be an impetus for the development and modernization of railways in northern Greece, particularly on the line from Alexandropoulos to Ormenio, a station on the border with Bulgaria.

During his visit to Kyiv, Greek Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis informed his EU colleagues that Greece is ready to contribute to solving the problem and focused on the “huge consequences” of the collapse of the agreement with Russia, especially for the countries of the Global South.

Athens is confident that such a proposal could be beneficial for both Ukraine and Greece, the newspaper writes.

As you know, Lithuania and Croatia have already offered their ports to help Ukraine with agricultural exports.

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USAID transferred weighing equipment for weighing railroad and road transport to Nibulon LLC

USAID’s Economic Support for Ukraine project has purchased weighing equipment for weighing railroad and road transport and transferred it to one of the largest operators in Ukraine’s grain market, JV Nibulon LLC (Mykolaiv), the grain trader’s press service reported.

“Providing Nibulon’s elevators with modern weighing equipment will speed up weighing of road and rail transport, provide automation and restore previously cut off capacity to the Izmail investment project. Thanks to this, we expect to restore the capacity of supply chains and speed up operations on acceptance and shipment of grain products. Additional weighing complexes will increase the turnover in conditions of increased load on land transportation”, – said the director on interaction with authorities and issues of sustainable development of “Nibulon” Mikhail Rizak.

According to the company, the weighing equipment will be used at four elevators of the company – in Mykolayiv, Poltava and Cherkasy regions.

With the beginning of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, Nibulon was forced to reorient its export chains and compensate for the lack of river navigation on the international inland waterway E-40. The priority was the investment project of the river port in Izmail and strengthening the logistic potential of the company in the use of land routes, recalled the press service of the grain trader.

Currently, Nibulon uses combined routes that combine transportation by truck and transshipment by rail with subsequent transshipment to water transport in Izmail.

USAID’s assistance to agroexporters is part of the Agricultural Sustainability Initiative in Ukraine, which is implemented by the U.S. Agency for International Development. It aims to help Ukraine increase its capacity to produce, store, transport and export grain.

JV Nibulon LLC was established in 1991. Before the Russian military invasion, the grain trader had 27 transshipment terminals and complexes for receiving agricultural crops, capacity for one-time storage of 2.25 million tons of agricultural products, a fleet of 83 vessels (including 23 tugboats), and owned the Nikolaev shipyard.

“Nibulon” before the war cultivated 82 thousand hectares of land in 12 regions of Ukraine and exported agricultural products to more than 70 countries.

The grain trader exported the maximum 5.64 million tons of agricultural products in 2021, reaching record shipments to foreign markets in August – 0.7 million tons, in the fourth quarter – 1.88 million tons and in the second half of the year – 3.71 million tons.

Nibulon’s losses from the full-scale military invasion of the Russian Federation reached $400 mln. Currently, the grain trader is operating at 30% of its capacity, has created a special unit for demining agricultural land and started production of the first vessel for demining international waterways at its shipyards in Mykolayiv.

The grain trader recently raised EUR27m from the Danish Export Investment Fund (EIFO) to increase the capacity of the Bessarabsky branch in Izmail, where an elevator and a flour mill will be built.

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At Ukrainian-Hungarian border from 16:00 on Monday temporarily stopped registration of citizens and transport

On the Ukrainian-Hungarian border from 16:00 on Monday, April 24, the registration of persons and vehicles on the Hungarian side is temporarily stopped, the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine reports.
“According to information from Hungarian colleagues, the database of the Hungarian Border Police temporarily suspended functioning,” the message in the Telegram channel indicated.
About the resumption of processing on the Hungarian side will be reported additionally.

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EU TRANSPORT SYSTEM NOT READY TO TRANSPORT LARGE VOLUMES OF GOODS FROM UKRAINE – OPINION

JSC Ukrzaliznytsia notes a number of problems on the part of the transport system of European countries, which prevent increasing the volume of cargo transportation by rail from Ukraine to Europe.
“The set of technical problems is that the transport system of European countries is not technically ready to transport such large volumes. It needs additional rolling stock: wagons and locomotives,” Deputy Director of the Department of Commercial Work at Ukrzaliznytsia Valeriy Tkachev said at the “Economics of War: May Review and Focus on Infrastructure” conference.
According to him, today Ukrzaliznytsia transports cargo using only 2,000 wagons, or about 130,000 tonnes of cargo per day at the western border crossings, which is approximately equal to 3.8 million tonnes of cargo per month. At the same time, Ukrzaliznytsia’s own capacities allow using 3,422 railcars, or 220,000 tonnes per day.
According to the Ukrainian railway operator, the root of the problem is that the railway infrastructure of Ukraine and Europe is significantly different in gauge. And for the exchange of goods between these two infrastructures, there are only two ways: to reload at the border or to change the wagon bogie. At the same time, Ukrzaliznytsia said that there are not enough transshipment terminals.
“Besides, the most acute problem is the number of wagons on 1,435 mm European gauge track. That is, we, for our part, can transport a much larger volume of cargo, but there is a problem either with a lack of transshipment capacity, or a problem of the availability of European wagons,” Tkachev said.
He also said that there is another technical problem, which is that the infrastructure of European countries has a limited capacity, since it was built for the needs of intra-European transport.
“In Europe, the share of railway transportation of the overall structure of the transport system is 15-35%, while we have 65%. Therefore, the European infrastructure was not initially designed for such large volumes of cargo transportation by rail,” he said.
According to Tkachev, the growth rate of railway transportation is also affected by organizational issues of business, which for many years has been building supply chains towards ports and which now needs to reorient towards border railway crossings.
“Now we have already accumulated 34,000 wagons in the network, which are loaded and are waiting to cross the border,” Tkachev said.
In addition, the presence of a number of red tape procedures at the border, in particular, repetitive procedures of phytosanitary and veterinary control, significantly slows down cargo transportation.
At the same time, the growth in railway transportation continues to recover: according to Tkachev, Ukrzaliznytsia transported 416,000 tonnes of agricultural products in March, and 638,000 tonnes in April. The goal of Ukrzaliznytsia is to reach 1-1.5 million tonnes per month of export of grain products.

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SKYUP AIRLINES PLANS TO TRANSPORT CARGO FROM CHINA TO UKRAINE VIA POLAND, ROMANIA AND MOLDOVA

SkyUp Airlines (Kyiv) is planning to transport large volumes of cargo from China to Ukraine via Poland, Romania and Moldova, and is also developing a concept for transporting cargo from the United States, for which it is necessary to go through a special procedure for obtaining FAA permits.
According to the company’s website, the company is also in dialogue with Southern Airways Express (the USA) regarding the branding of their aircraft in the colors of the Ukrainian flag and is discussing the possibility of creating “sister airlines” that could attract SkyUp employees to work on an outsourcing basis.
According to the airline’s website, in March, SkyUp performed 21 evacuation flights on the Chisinau-Tel Aviv route and transported 2,835 refugees to Israel under the repatriation program, as well as their 124 pets.
Today, SkyUp is working on the possibility of performing evacuation flights to Portugal, Sweden and the UK under the Israel-Romania program.
In addition, SkyUp agreed with Suceava Airport (Romania) on the possibility of transporting cargo. This is the closest point to the border of Ukraine.
The company has now also confirmed shipments of humanitarian supplies from Portugal and Israel to Ukraine via Poland, including helmets and clothing for the army.
It is noted that during this time the company transported 112 tonnes of humanitarian cargo. The cargo included medicines, including insulin, baby food, personal hygiene and household chemicals, blankets, diapers, etc. The cargo was distributed according to its intended purpose: for the needs of Ukrainian refugees in Chisinau and various cities of Ukraine.

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