Mind nominations 2022. Industry

Mind is taking stock of the year, marking out persons and structures in each sector of the national economy that have distinguished themselves especially strikingly after 24.02 – even if not always successfully – or encountered unprecedented challenges, even general crisis adjusted. The list is not any rating, though it reflects the opinion of the industry-specific part of our team about what were the most important things that occurred in the operation of selected industry.

"Victim of the Year" is a company/brand that suffered irreparable damage due to the war.

"Unbreakable of the Year" is a company/brand significant for the industry and suffered huge losses due to the war, but managed to resume and continue its work.

"Deal of the Year" is the most meaningful deal for the country/industry, the largest in size and/or impact, becoming even more important given the war and future reconstruction of the country.

"Positive Surprise of the Year" is a company/brand/person who, against the backdrop of armed aggression, managed to become a leader/increase profits/take a proactive position, that was a surprise for the industry/professional community/markets, and contributed to the extra stability of the industry/country.

"Disappointment of the Year" is a company/brand/person who, against the backdrop of armed aggression, having huge resources, failed to properly dispose of them or took a destructive position.

"Unlucky of the Year" is a company/brand/person who had invested heavily in a project/asset/niche before the war, but the war destroyed it radically or the initiative lost its relevance for many years.

"Failure of the Year" – structure/individual/institutions that made the most unsuccessful/controversial/inappropriate decisions during the wartime.

"War's beneficiary" is a company/brand/person who gained more profit than losses in the face of armed aggression.
Since the operations format and the intensity of events differ considerably in various fields, there can be from four to seven nominees in each industry.

Ukraine lost more than 30% of its GDP in 2022. For the heavy industry russian aggression became an endurance test.

During the USSR era, the Soviet Ukrainian republic was one of the most developed industrial entities. But during the last 30 years of contemporary history, no Prime Minister or President was able to update and modernise the existing industrial potential. The Ministry of Industrial Policy was finally closed on March 23, 2014.

In Ukraine, there is still no development strategy for the national industry aimed at the future, not at supporting the heritage of the 19th century’ Industrial revolution. Until recently, there was a policy that allowed the owners of factories to demand numerous benefits and state guarantees to maintain old models of equipment – instead of switching to modern technologies and development.

In particular, none of Ukrainian governments has dared to restructure the coal industry and close unprofitable mines. This was made by russians – now there is a total shutdown and flooding of mines in the occupied territory of Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts. Even of those that could still work.

The same goes to oil refining. One should remember: in 1991, the total volume of oil processing at six Ukrainian refineries was 56 million tonnes. In later years, such a quantity of oil was never processed in Ukraine. Excess capacities should have been abandoned a long time ago. The only really necessary enterprise – Kremenchuk Oil Refinery – became a victim of war.

A heavy loss to the remnants of military mechanical engineering was caused by all those public figures who in the spring of 2022, for the sake of hype, voiced how each plant works to help the army or simply support the economy. As a result of rocket attacks, all entities mentioned by these newsmakers – weapon factories and supporting enterprises throughout the territory of Ukraine – were hit: attacks led not only to destruction, but also to human casualties.
Even after several air attacks on enterprises in Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Mykolaiv, Lviv, Zaporizhzhia, and Kharkiv, the owner of Energomashspetsstal from Kramatorsk, Maksym Yefimov, reported on April 14 that "the enterprise is working and filling orders." The next day a shelling damaged the plant, so it stopped working.

In early November 2022, the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine decided to nationalize almost 900 enterprises belonging to the aggressor state or working for the benefit of the russian federation. The list also included Energomashspetsstal, 92% of which is owned by the Cypriot offshore company, controlled by Rosatom.

Zaporizhtransformator PJSC, owned by Ukrainian-russian businessman Kostiantyn Grygoryshyn, is also among the nationalised enterprises. The products of the plant are most needed in Ukraine today – very large transformers that our country is currently looking for all over the world. But the company has been in the state of bankruptcy for several years. Apparently, this is a good case for the State Bureau of Investigations and the Economic Security Bureau of Ukraine.

There are several more interesting cases that are parts of the AvtoKrAZ cluster, which was owned by Kostiantyn Zhevago and nationalised by NSDC. For example, the Kherson Cardan Shafts Plant, the Tokmak Forging and Stamping Plant, the Simferopol Steering Wheel Plant, and the Stakhanov Rail Car Manufacturing Plant. They all went bankrupt 10-15 years ago. And now the russian occupiers use them for repairing the russian armour on the remains of production facilities. Local residents work there – simply because they were offered jobs.

In the spring, the management of the Alchevsk Metallurgical Plant (under occupation since 2014) signed a number of agreements with the russian Uralvagonzavod for the supply of steel for the production of new tanks for the invading army. The contract is executed.

The largest steel plant in Ukraine – ArcelorMittal-Kryvy Rig – had to show considerable ingenuity, resuming work every time after targeted russian bombings. The huge territory of the combine allowed the maneuvering – those shops where there were no destructions worked. The enterprise was seriously damaged by rocket attacks, lost part of the industrial workshops, but held on.

There is currently a global review of the industrial capacity needed to move forward. So right now it is necessary to draw fundamental conclusions from the previous experience and the consequences of the policy pursued until recently.

In 2022, Ukraine fell out of the top-10 ranking by the World Steel Manufacturers Association (Worldsteel), because the drop in production of iron, steel and rolled products amounted to more than 70%. Instead, Taiwan entered the ranking.

Ukraine is a metallurgical country, and each plant has a specialisation in a certain type of product. Azovstal produced railway trackage for the needs of Ukrzaliznytsia railway company. Today, the country is forced to buy these products at twice the price in France. From the port of Mariupol, russian invaders stole more than 230,000 tonnes of rolled metal, which Metinvest had prepared for export.

Most of the metallurgical enterprises in the Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts cut production due to hostilities. Sometimes they work at a third of their capacity, and sometimes they are freezed. Today, factories are gradually resuming their activities.

Also, in this nomination, we should mention the miners of DTEK – Pavlogradvugillia and DTEK – Dobropillyavugillya. They somehow managed to produce more than 22 million tonnes of coal for Ukrainian thermal power plants and co-generation plants (almost as much as in 2021. – Mind). They work just as well, despite the shelling.

We would like to name several dozen enterprises of electrical engineering throughout the territory of Ukraine, whose operation is currently saving the country from a total blackout. But for the sake of their security, we will refrain from it for now. We will thank everyone personally after the Victory.

Velta Holdings was created by two companies. One of them, Titan-Velta, has been working in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast for more than 10 years, and occupies 2% of the world market of titanium raw materials. The invention – waste-free production of metal titanium powders and its alloys – has undergone full examination and is patented by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

The Ukrainian method of obtaining metallic titanium reduces its cost and has zero waste. "At present, titanium is a critical defence raw material, and access to it is a matter of national security. Understanding this and having patented technology, we will continue our path to the goal of building a number of factories for the production of final titanium products," commented Andriy Brodsky, CEO of Velta Holdings US Inc.

In December 2022, at the AeroMat International Business Congress in the field of the aerospace industry in France, Velta presented titanium powder, which is produced using a unique "green" technology patented in Ukraine and the USA. World aerospace giants, such as Boeing, Airbus, Ariane, Dassault, Safran, are already actively using additive technologies for repairing and manufacturing new parts from metal powders. Therefore, two industries – space and titanium, which are rapidly developing in the world, are strategically important for Ukraine.

The Nikopol Ferroalloy Plant is also worth mentioning. It belongs to Igor Kolomoisky’s business orbit. In the H1 of 2022 the plant received an income of UAH 9.05 billion, or, at the average exchange rate, $245 million.

But, given the fact that for six months russia has been completely destroying the Nikopol community with its bombings, where the Nikopol Ferroalloy Plant itself and the two largest polymetallic deposits in Europe – Marganetske and Pokrovske (formerly Ordzhonikidzevske) – are located, it is difficult to say what will remain of them.

This year, NNEGC Energoatom started to restructure and optimise the production. This led to the suspension of ore mining, salary delays, and dismissal of professionals. There is a large-scale process of redistribution and alienation of the company's property, which, in fact, leads to its destruction. But the Ukrainian authorities don’t want to notice this till now.

A similar situation arose at the unique Mykolaiv-based Zoria-Mashproject enterprise, which designs and manufactures gas turbine installations for warships and oil and gas pipelines. The team and the trade union opposed the current director Oleksiy Zhukovets, who was firing leading specialists. Zhukovets’s contract expired on December 31, 2022.

However, there is no government response to the situation yet, because there is no Ministry of Industry in the country.
For 30 years in a row, russia tried to recreate a similar production in its own country, even taking Mykolaiv specialists to St. Petersburg. But nothing happened. So today, the workshops of this enterprise are one of the aggressor's targets for bombing.

The Kremenchuk Refinery obtained a capacity of 18 million tonnes. Even if it works at half of it, it covers all the needs of Ukraine in all petroleum products for all sectors of the economy (about 8 million tonnes of all petroleum products). The russians targeted the plant three times with missiles. Shelling caused serious damage, so today the plant is out of order. In addition, the plant has to return $173 million by the verdict of the US Supreme Court in favour of Tatar shareholders – Tatneft.

The NSDCU included the Kremenchuk Oil Refinery in the list of nationalised enterprises.

The second nominee for the "unlucky" status is the Severodonetsk-based Azot plant (owned by Dmytro Firtash), which produced a number of important fertilisers for farming. Today it’s simply cut into metal and destroyed by the occupiers. The same fate befell the unique Azovmash plant in Mariupol. Before the war it produced railway tanks for the transportation of chemicals – ammonia, nitrogen and various acids.

Read also: Shares of five strategic enterprises were passed to the state. Who will the plants of Kolomoisky, Boguslayev, Zhevago and Grygoryshyn work for now?

Boguslayev headed the company back in the days of the USSR. And, because of his position, participated in all the Soviet Union's affairs, when it came to the "black" supply of rotorcraft and spare parts to all the hotspots of the world – in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and then to the Balkans in the early 1990s.

These schemes existed during the 30 years of Ukrainian independence. But none of the leaders of Ukraine had the courage to stop this traffic. The restrictions were taken only eight months after the start of the full-scale russian invasion, when the signs of treason could no longer be ignored. Boguslayev openly told his employees that "his plant will continue to work under any government in Ukraine."

For the future, after the necessary investigative actions and reorganisation of the production process, the facilities of Motor-Sich are considered to become the main platform for the production of new Ukrainian drones.

Mind nominations 2022: Companies and people who impressed during the year.

• Agro-industrial complex
• Banking
• Fuel and energy complex
• Public finance and fiscal sector