Archive

Friday, August 13

Editor’s Note: Thanks to musical chairs at UZ, we regularly watch the spectacle of a new CEO washing the railroad’s dirty laundry in public. The routine is partly kicking dirt on the predecessor, partly lobbying for...

Friday, August 13

So far this year, 32,000 tourists have visited Chornobyl, close to the 36,000 for all of last year, Kyrylo Harnyk, an official with the Exclusion Zone Management agency, told a Chornobyl tourism roundtable yesterday. Two weeks ago, Ukrzaliznytsia sent the first test train down the Vilcha – Yaniv tra...

Friday, August 13

In what could be a $150 million contract, Chornobyl’s Exclusion Zone Agency is launching a tender for construction of a facility to store vitrified high level nuclear waste for 100 years . In the aftermath of the 1986 nuclear disaster, a French consortium, Novarka, built the €1.5 billion New Safe Confinement. An American company, Holtec International, built the first stage of what is ...

Friday, August 13

A Chinese container train is rolling across Siberia, following a new route to Kyiv. Shunning the western China-Kazakhstan route, Eurosib sent 41 containers by sea from China to Vladivostok. From the Russian Far East, the train is traveling west on the Trans-Siberian Railway. One year...

Friday, August 13

Vowing a ‘Big Construction’ for the state railroad, Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov introduced Kamyshin to railway workers and managers and gave a pep talk. “Ukrzaliznytsia used to be a powerful company,” he said. “My task is to reverse the ...

Friday, August 13

Due to poor track conditions, Ukrzaliznytsia’s ‘high speed’ elite trains run at 100 km an hour, 65% of their rated capacity, Alexander Kamyshin, the new acting CEO of the state railroad, tells Interfax-Ukraine. Despite these limitations, Kamyshin plans to expand the service to more regional capitals, starting with Cherkasy ...

Friday, August 13

More than 8,000 freight cars were rated ‘abandoned’ earlier this week – hitched to trains marooned for lack of locomotives or crews, Valery Tkachev, deputy director of UZ’s commercial department, writes on Facebook. Of the total, 28 trains were rated ‘abandoned’ – delay...

Friday, August 13

Over the next decade, UZ needs to buy 315 new locomotives, UZ board member František Bureš writes in a column. These purchases are essential to keeping Eurasia’s fourth largest railway running. Only 5% of UZ 3,600 locomotives are under 25 years. The rest – vi...

Friday, August 13

Concorde Capital’s Alexander Paraschiy writes: “The company will be able to accumulate more funds to finance its capex programs, as well as will enjoy better leverage multiples. This potentially may lead to further upgrades of the company’s credit...

Friday, August 13

Cash-starved UZ got a break Wednesday when the State Regulatory Service approved cargo rate increases designed to bring in an extra $500 million over the next 18 months. Starting in September, grain and iron ore rates go up 8%. Near year, grain rates go up another 6.5%. Rates for iron ore, coal and cement go up 20.4%. UZ supervisory board member Serhiy Leshchenko calc...

Friday, August 13

Procurement of scrap metal, a major commodity in post-Soviet economies, is up 43% yoy, to 2.35 million tons, reports the Ukrainian Association of Secondary Metals, or UAVtormet. Exports, largely to Turkey, are up 19.5 times yoy, to 334,600 tons. Supplies to Ukraine’s steel mills increas...

Friday, August 13

Ukraine’s iron ore exports are down 3.5% this year by volume, but revenues are double – to $4.7 billion, reports the State Customs Service. Of the 26 million tons exported through July, China took 46%, the Czech Republic took 9.5%, and Austria took 8%.

Friday, August 13

Denting German and Ukrainian dreams of replacing Russian natural gas in Ukraine’s main pipeline with hydrogen, a New York Times story warned last night that hydrogen “may, in fact, be worse for the climate than previously thought.” Drawing on a study in the Energy Science & Engineering journal by Cornell a...