Photo from UNIAN
The first stage of the factory was originally planned to be put into operation in early 2018.
Roshen Confectionery Corporation, owned by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, has postponed the launch of a new biscuit factory in the town of Boryspil near Kyiv.
The launch, which was scheduled for autumn 2018, has been postponed and the opening ceremony will not be held this year, the news outlet LIGA.net reported on December 17.
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The corporation's top managers first started to speak about the construction of the Boryspil-based biscuit factory in 2013. The plans changed after Russia slapped an embargo on Ukrainian confectionery products. The management revisited the idea in 2016. To this end, the company leased five land plots in Boryspil's district for a long term.
Director of Roshen Biscuit Complex Kostiantyn Piven said then the advantage of the site in Boryspil was its location in an industrial area, which did not require re-zoning. Now the corporation is going to buy the land plots for UAH 60 million (US$2.2 million).
Roshen President Viacheslav Moskalevsky said the first stage of the construction project was estimated at about UAH 1 billion ($35.9 million). But the company failed to complete the project within the budget. According to Roshen's recent press release, the total investment in the first stage amounted to UAH 1.5 billion ($53.9 million), including UAH 1.2 billion ($43.1 million) for the construction alone.
According to Piven, the cost of the whole project was UAH 2.8 billion ($100.6 million) with the declared output capacity being at 20,000 tonnes of products. The whole complex was planned to be put into operation by 2020.
The first stage of the factory was planned to be commissioned in early 2018. Then it was rescheduled for autumn.
Now the launch has been postponed again. The publication's sources in the company say on condition of anonymity that "it's not time for the launch of the factory." Presumably, this will happen in early 2019.
Roshen has a certificate that the building is ready and it has officially been put into operation. "The company has been performing production trial runs: the production line is switched on from time to time to streamline the production process," the company said.
The company has already recruited 52 workers for one shift; they are mostly residents of Boryspil.
In two years, it is planned to increase the personnel to 500 people. A total of 1,100 employees will work at the factory, the corporation noted.
The first line of the new complex will produce crackers. "The production trial runs will take up to three to four weeks. Then there will be the initial launch of production," the corporation's press service said.
The capacity of the line is about a tonne of crackers per hour. What is more, a line to produce 'Esmeralda' cookies is to be assembled by the end of the year. Now this type of cookies is produced by the corporation's Vinnitsa factory. The products will be marketed both in Ukraine and abroad, namely in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Poland, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, and the CIS.