Ukrainian producers initiate special investigation of dairy imports.
14 dairy companies have united forces and prepared joint application to the Ministry of Economic Development, Trade and Agriculture to launch special investigation aimed to protect domestic dairy industry from growing imports, announced the chairman of the Union of Dairy Enterprises of Ukraine Vadym Chagarovsky.
According to him, according to the preliminary results of 2020, Ukraine imported 47 thousand tons of cheese, 28 thousand tons of whole milk products, 12 thousand tons of butter. If all this is translated into raw materials, then imports received 1 million tons of milk.
"Ukrainian milk processing enterprises processed 3.7 million tons of milk in 2020. Therefore, imports account for almost 30% of what is processed by the domestic dairy processing industry", said Vadym Chagarovsky. He stressed that today dairy companies in Ukraine are operating at a loss, do not have the funds for development, and this business is not interesting for investors. "There are bankruptcies of enterprises: if in 1990 there were 670 milk processing enterprises in Ukraine, in 2019 178 showed their activities. I think that in the last 1.5 years another 15-20 enterprises have ceased operations," says Vadym Chagarovsky.
He expressed hope that the Ministry of Agrarian Policy (expected to be restored in March 2021) will approve a strategy for development of dairy farming and processing.
Source: Agroportal
