Expansion into Europe: Ukrainian ice cream company initiates operations in Poland

The Ukrainian producer of ice cream and frozen semi-finished products "Three Bears" has begun expansion into Europe. For this purpose, it took an unsecured loan in the amount of UAH 210 million ($5.7 million) from Raiffeisen Bank under insurance coverage of the Export Credit Agency, according to the websites of Raiffeisen and ECA.

"Now we are implementing an export expansion strategy. Our target market is Poland, where we have been present since July 2022. We will gradually expand our sales markets to other European countries," said Dmytro Ushmayev, founder and president of Three Bears LLC.

The loan issued to the company became the largest in the ECA portfolio and the first for Raiffeisen Bank in cooperation with the agency.

"We are glad to welcome Raiffeisen Bank among the banks that support Ukrainian commodity exports during the war. This agreement is the largest so far this year, and its implementation can bring the country UAH 600 million ($16.3 million) in export revenue, and therefore a corresponding inflow of foreign currency and tax revenues to the state budget," said Ruslan Hashev, acting chairman of the ECA board.

ECA's insurance liability to Raiffeisen Bank amounts to UAH 178.5 million ($4.9 million).

The chairman of the board of the bank, Oleksandr Pysaruk, said that since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the bank independently provided loans to Ukrainian exporters for UAH 8.5 billion ($231.2 million). In total, since February 2022, it has issued loans to Ukrainian enterprises worth UAH 27 billion ($734.3 million).

At the beginning of May, we reported that the Ukrainian taxi call service Uklon entered the market of Azerbaijan.

Since April, the Ukrainian chain of DIY stores Dnipro-M began expanding in Poland .

On May 5, the Ukrainian air carrier SkyUp announced that it had registered an airline in Malta.