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EBRD signs first deal in paper sector in Ukraine
Rubizhansky Cardboard and Packaging Mill, Ukraine’s leading producer of corrugated packaging, is borrowing $14 million from the EBRD to modernise and expand its paper and corrugated packaging plant in the eastern Ukraine town of Rubizhne and to expand its new packaging plant near Kiev. The modernisation project will improve the energy efficiency of the plants and expand the company’s waste-paper collection and processing network.
Rubizhansky, a partnership of Ukraine’s Rubipak and the UK-registered DS Smith group, is a technological leader in its sector, holding an international ISO 9001 quality certificate. The company uses its own paper production, corrugation and conversion to produce packaging for transportation and display of a wide range of consumer and industrial goods. With a 1,153-strong workforce, Rubizhansky is one of the principal employers in the Rubizhne region, and generates about 20 per cent of local tax revenues.
Olivier Descamps, EBRD Business Group Director for Ukraine and South East Europe, said that through this deal EBRD not only promotes competition in one of the most dynamic sectors in the Ukrainian economy, growing at over 15 per cent a year, but also helps to address regional development issues. Rubizhansky Cardboard and Packaging Mill is a good example of the successful development of a Ukrainian company with foreign strategic investors, he added. The EBRD financing should help the company maintain its leading position in the corrugated packaging market in Ukraine and increase its potential to serve the growing needs of customers across Ukraine and other CIS countries.
Across central and eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, the EBRD has now signed 12 transactions in the pulp and paper sector with a cumulative commitment exceeding €240 million.
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