The supervisory board of PrJSC Kyiv Motorcycle Plant (Kyiv) of businessman Vasyl Khmelnytsky has agreed on signing a surety agreement for Alfa-Bank’s (Ukraine) opening a credit line for Unit Holdings LLC (Kyiv) to finance the construction of UNIT.City. According to a report in the information disclosure system of the National Securities and Stock Market Commission, the decision to consent to the transaction was made during an extraordinary shareholders’ meeting on November 30, 2018.
In particular, the matter concerns the intention of Unit Holdings LLC to raise a five-year non-renewable credit line in the amount of $8 million with an interest rate not exceeding 12% per annum from Alfa-Bank. The guarantor in the transaction will be PrJSC Kyiv Motorcycle Plant.
The press service of UDP company told Interfax-Ukraine the money raised will be used to complete the reconstruction of two new campuses of the first stage of UNIT.City.
As reported, Kyiv City Council at the end of September 2018 decided to lease two land plots with a total area of 22.2 hectares at 8 Simyi Khokhlovykh Street to Unit Zhytloinvest and Unit Holdings for the construction of a housing and office complex.
According to UNIT.City’s website, as of November 2018 two business campuses and the co-working space Chasopys.UNIT with 85 resident companies were operating in the innovation park.
It is planned in 2019 to expand the park with three more business campuses, increasing the number of tenants to 150 companies. It is planned that by 2025 the total area of UNIT.City will be 500,000 square meters.
Earlier it was reported, with reference to UDP CEO Vitaliy Melnyk, that UDP and KAN Development are engaged in the joint development of the construction of a six-storey business center in the territory of UNIT.City. Its total area will be about 13,000 square meters.
UNIT.City Innovation Park was officially opened in April 2017 in the territory of the former Kyiv Motorcycle Plant. The co-working space Chasopys-UNIT, the IT school UNIT Factory, three laboratories, a business campus, a foundation and five accelerators are located in its territory.
The Snapchat social network has placed its office and the R&D division in the UNIT.City innovative park in Kyiv, Managing Partner and CEO of UNIT.City Maksym Yakover has written on his Facebook page. “Snapchat has become a resident of UNIT.City. Almost a year of work for a large team to make it happen. We have an office and an R&D division, which, by the way, is actively expanding now,” he said.
Yakover said that Snapchat is one of the most innovative companies in the world.
Snapchat is a mobile photo messaging and multimedia sharing application which capitalization is $8 billion and which has 186 million active users a day. The application was released in September 2011 by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown.
In 2015, Snapchat bought a Ukrainian startup (Odesa) for $150 million.
As reported, businessman Vasyl Khmelnytsky intends to expand the area of the UNIT.City innovative park in Kyiv from 19 hectares to 26 hectares.
The managing partners of UNIT.City are Maksym Bakhmatov and Maksym Yakover (the CEO of the park).
Yakover is also a co-owner of the Chasopys creative co-working space at 3 Lva Tolstoho Street in Kyiv.
The European Business Association (EBA) in September got 15 new members, including Ukrlandfarming, one of the largest agricultural holdings in terms of land bank, the UNIT.City innovative park, Biopharma pharmaceutical plant LLC and ADD (Apteka Dobroho Dnia) pharmacy chain.
According to the EBA, among its new members are also Aakon Grain Ukraine LLC with an elevator of 10,000 tonnes, providing agricultural machinery leasing services, Brovary Aluminum Plant from ALUMETA Group, and Art Nation of movie maker Eduard Akhramovych, working in the sphere of marketing.
Its new members also became Audit Consult Group LLC, the creators of premises for entrepreneurs Business Interiors LLC, a real estate company from Benish Group GmbH, Edwin Steel Corporation LLC and Goodgrainoil, selling grain and oilseeds.
According to the release, in addition, EBA members became Perenio, whose parent company Perenio IoT has its headquarters in the Czech Republic, Rent-a-car Ukraine LLC, an official representative of Europcar in Ukraine, and Skyrora UA, a subsidiary of British-based Skyrora Limited of Volodymyr Levykin.
The EBA told Interfax-Ukraine the total number of the association members reached 979 companies.
Syngenta, one of the world’s largest producers of plant and seed protection agents, has opened a Digital Innovation Lab in Kyiv, the sixth platform in the company’s global network of laboratories. “Our laboratories in other countries focus on researching and studying consumer demand for digital products, developing concepts and creating prototypes of products. The Ukrainian laboratory will complement their work by offering a full cycle of developing solutions – from research and modeling of test samples of digital products to creating working versions ready for launch with real users and integrated with Syngenta systems,” Benjamin Ninio, the head of the global direction of digital technologies at Syngenta, said during the opening of the company’s laboratory.
According to him, over the past year and a half Syngenta has launched five similar projects in different countries of the world. Now the laboratories operate in the United States, China, India, Singapore, and the UK.
The laboratory office in Kyiv is located in the innovative and technological park Unit.city.
Syngenta is one of the world leaders in plant protection and seed production. The company employs 28,000 people in more than 90 countries of the world.
DIGITAL INNOVATION, LAB, SYNGENTA, TECHNOLOGICAL PARK, UNIT.CITY
The Kyiv City Council at a session on Thursday, September 20, made a decision to lease two land parcels with a total area of 22.2 ha located at 8, Simyi Khokhlovykh to companies UNIT Zhytloinvest and UNIT Holdings to build a residential and office complex. A total of 71 lawmakers backed the lease of 8.2 ha land parcel to UNIT Zhytloinvest and 83 lawmakers supported the lease of 14 ha to UNIT Holdings. As reported, KAN Development and UDP in 2019 will start building a residential complex of 170,000 square meters in Kyiv-based UNIT.City innovative park. The share of housing will be around 30% of the park.
The project provides a mix of housing of business and comfort classes. The construction is scheduled to begin in 2019, and the first stage, which will account for 15% of the total area (about 25,000 square meters), will be commissioned in 12-14 months.
KAN Development is also engaged in joint development for the construction of a six-story business center on UNIT.City’s area. Its commissioning is planned before the end of 2018. Its total area is about 13,000 square meters. At the same time, preliminary lease agreements have already been signed for 90% of the area. Under this project, UDP and KAN Development act as co-investors.
Apart from housing, UNIT.City will also have a university, a school, a kindergarten in the future.
As reported with reference to founder of the UFuture investment group and K.Fund Vasyl Khmelnytsky, it is planned that the area of the UNIT.City innovation park in Kyiv will be expanded to 26 hectares from 19 hectares (as of May 2018).
The UNIT.City innovation park officially opened in April 2017 on the territory of the former Kyiv Motorcycle Plant. Its territory comprises the Chasopys-UNIT co-working facility, IT school UNIT Factory, three laboratories, a business campus, a fund and five accelerators.
According to UNIT.City’s website, four new business campuses, three accelerators, four funds will be created in the park before 2019. The number of resident companies will be increased to 100. By 2025, the park should include 25 hectares of space for work and leisure, as well as more than 300 companies and R&D laboratories.
KYIV CITY, LEASING, OFFICES, RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS, UNIT.CITY
Businessman Vasyl Khmelnytsky’s UFuture investment group will participate in the development of a project to create in Astana (Kazakhstan) a copy of the innovation park UNIT.City, which UFuture has been developing for several years in Kyiv. “I’ve just returned from Kazakhstan, where I was at the invitation of Prime Minister Bakhytzhan Sagintayev. We’ve agreed we will help create an analogue of UNIT.City in the center of Astana,” Khmelnytsky wrote on his Facebook page.
He said starting this autumn UFuture would launch a project to create an eco-system and a university in Astana, following the example of UNIT.City. He added that this project is already known in Kazakhstan, as Kazakh students study at Kyiv’s UNIT Factory.
Khmelnytsky positively assessed the experience of creating an international technopark for IT start-ups at the Astana Hub and the Astana International Financial Center, where residents enjoy a preferential tax regime, British law and an independent court of British judges. UFuture’s press service told the Kyiv-based Interfax-Ukraine news agency that it would be possible to speak about details of the possible participation of the investment group in the Kazakhstan project after the project was prepared.
As earlier reported, UFuture is situated on 25 hectares of land at Kyiv’s motorcycle plant where it is developing the UNIT.City innovation park. The “anchors” of the project are programming factory UNIT Factor created in spring 2016 under partnership with French School 42, and the Technology Companies’ Development Center (TCDC). Khmelnytsky has already announced plans to create similar projects in Lviv and Kharkiv.
UFuture Investment Group, headquartered in Brussels, was established in the autumn of 2017 and unites Khmelnytsky’s business projects. The group includes UDP Renewables, the Bila Tserkva Industrial Park, the innovation parks UNIT.City and LvivTech.City.
