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20% y/y to 5.1 t/ha in 2020.
9.2.7 TMT corporate news
Ukrposhta has climbed to the 30th spot in a UN ranking of the world’s 170 national postal operators. Ranking for reliability, availability, relevance and resistance to shocks, the Postal Development Index is maintained by the Universal Postal Union to chart progress toward efficiency. Alluding to a new €30mn European Investment Bank loan to build three new postal sorting centres, Ihor Smeliansky, Ukrposhta general director, wrote on Facebook: “I am confident that after the construction of new sorting centres...and adoption of the law on the postal bank, we will take our place among the leaders.”
Nova Poshta’s deliveries jumped by 35% during the first half of this year,
compared to the same period in 2019. With much of the first half coinciding with the lockdown, a popular new service was drug delivery – 82,000 in three months. Overall, Nova Poshta delivered 128mn parcels in the first half of this year.
Nova Poshta is about to open its fourth high speed sorting centre, in Kharkiv. Costing €10mn the new sorting centre uses Dutch Vanderlande equipment and is capable of sorting 15,000 packages an hour. In the last two years, the privately-owned delivery service has opened high speed sorting centres in Kyiv, Khmelnytskyi and Lviv.
Riding the wave of e-commerce, Nova Poshta has expanded its branch network this year by 22%, reaching 7,145. The package delivery service now has 4,000 branches in villages. “In 2020, despite the quarantine, Nova Poshta expanded its network,” says company CEO Alexander Bulba. “We focused on small towns and villages...On average, the company opened five branches a day, four of which - in villages where the company was not previously represented.”
9.2.9 Utilities corporate news
Cabinet orders merger of Centrenergo with DTEK-leased mine. Ukraine’s cabinet ordered on October 5 the merger of power generation company Centrenergo with some state-controlled coal mines into a new joint stock company, its website said.
The list of “efficient” mines that will be merged with the power generation company should be determined by the end of this year. The total planned production capacity of these mines should not exceed 4.2 mmt of sellable coal.
In the same resolution, the cabinet ordered the termination of the government's lease agreement of Dobropillia Coal, a mining asset leased by DTEK Energy. The termination assumes that the lessee will repay all the lease arrears and won’t demand any compensation from the state for any possible upgrades that have been made on the asset.
The resolution effectively means that Centrenergo will be merged with Dobropillia Coal only, the asset that – according to earlier reports from DTEK – could provide up to 4 mmt of coal for Centrenergo. Dobropillia is clearly more cost-efficient than any state-run mine. The solution looks beneficial for DTEK,
67 UKRAINE Country Report November 2020 www.intellinews.com
