Despite the war, Ukrainian businesses continue to invest in development. During the war, 20 companies from Forbes' ranking of the country's largest investors invested 173 billion UAH ($5 billion) in business development. In 2023, they increased capital investments by an average of 33%.

The leaders of their sectors—Rinat Akhmetov's Metinvest, Vitaliy Antonov's OKKO, Ruslan Shostak's Terwin, and Vodafone—shared their investment plans for 2024–2025 during the Forbes Ukraine "Money for Victory" forum.

Vasyl Danylyak, CEO of OKKO Group

In the last two years, we have been working on developing another company strategy—towards biofuel. At the end of the year, we approved the concept of our first bioethanol plant, capable of producing 85,000 tons of product—equivalent to 260,000 tons of corn. We have already started its construction—it will take about two years to import and install the equipment.

Currently, we are developing the concept of a biodiesel plant. We thought ahead that we should be self-sufficient in raw materials, so we went into crop production and acquired an agricultural company in Ternopil region. There is also some livestock farming, which we plan to expand. This is not just a coincidence but part of our plan to enter biomethane production.

This year, we also started a project and have already paid for all the equipment for battery storage. In the fall, we plan to launch our first wind energy project with a capacity of 150 MW in Volyn. Overall, we have planned $500 million in investments for 2024–2025.

However, it is important not to have illusions that we are in an investment boom. More than 8 million people have left the country. In the week following May 18, when the mobilization law came into effect, fuel sales in OKKO's network of gas stations decreased by 12–15% depending on the region. By the end of May, the company managed to restore fuel sales by 4%.

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the Ukrainian fuel market has shrunk by 25% in liters. In the first year of the war, the decline reached 32%, but in the second year, the market grew slightly.

"Successful" investment cases in 2022–2023 are due to the fact that the hryvnia was closed within the country, making it impossible to invest abroad, so there were no alternatives. This was just one way to preserve money.

Ruslan Shostak, co-owner of EVA and Varus, president of TERWIN Corporation

We had very ambitious plans for 2022–2023 regarding foreign investments and entering new markets, but we will not be doing that for now. From the first day of the war, we decided that the group of companies would be Ukraine-centric. All available investment money will be invested in Ukraine. Over these two years, we have already invested about 7 billion UAH in our business here. Over the next two years, we plan to invest about 10 billion UAH in the development of our existing business.

First of all, in the development of a new project for us—a logistics hub. We have already started construction in Odesa, with warehouses in Kyiv and Lviv to follow. With our own funds and attracted investments, we plan to build a company worth $1 billion over the next five years, with 1 million square meters of warehouses in the country. This requires $700 million in investments.

The Terwin group took over the management of Vinnytsia Household Chemicals from ARMA, and last year this company became the largest taxpayer to the budget through the management of confiscated assets. It currently employs 200 workers.

Our case is completely transparent, we did not feel any pressure, but working with seized property is really difficult. This was only possible because we are a bit crazy; I cannot recommend such an experience to everyone. We invested about 400 million UAH. We pay ARMA 100 million UAH annually.

If ARMA sells the seized property, we could attract hundreds of billions of hryvnias in the coming years. Despite everything, the country has a very good investment climate, and the real estate, transport, and other markets are not declining. This is a good time for sales.

Oleksandr Myronenko, Chief Operating Officer of Metinvest Group

Metinvest invested 23 billion UAH during 2022–2023. The main projects are the modernization of Kametstal and Zaporizhstal, and the "green" transformation.

The three key investment priorities for the company in 2024–2025 are:

1. Our people who work at the enterprises. We pay our employees increased bonuses (20–50% of their salary), and from May 1, we raised salaries by up to 15% depending on the specialty.
2. Equipment and workplaces. For 2024, we have allocated $320 million in capital investments and about $350 million in operating investments. Currently, we are almost entirely focused on supporting current activities. These are investments aimed at maintaining our equipment: standard repairs of blast furnaces, sintering machines, equipment of our mining and processing plants, and the development of mine management in the city of Pokrovsk. Why so? Currently, we are operating at about 65–70% of our pre-war capacity. When the fighting ends, we will need to ramp up production—thanks to our people and equipment.
3. Support for the Armed Forces, especially in the cities where our enterprises are located. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the company has spent over 6 billion UAH on humanitarian and military support. Currently, we spend about 200 million UAH monthly on fortifications and brigade support.

Our strategy also includes a complete transition to "green" metallurgy and the production of "green" steel. For this, we will need $9 billion within ten years after the war ends. The company cannot implement this project alone. However, convincing banks to finance projects in Ukraine is almost impossible.

Therefore, we are considering a joint project to build a plant in Italy together with Danieli, with a budget of about €2 billion. In my opinion, the Ukrainian economy will only benefit from this.

Olga Ustinova, CEO of Vodafone Ukraine

In May, we signed a memorandum with the government for 10 billion UAH in investments over 2024–2025. Over the past two years, our investments amounted to about 9.7 billion UAH. Year over year, they increased by almost 60%; for comparison, in 2021, our investments amounted to 3.7 billion UAH.

Why so? The entire telecommunications industry understands that we need to build a strong digital infrastructure now so that when investing in reconstruction, it will be of the right format—digital.

I hate the phrase "rebuild the country"—I don't want a country that was there before the war. It should be completely new—technological and competitive in the entire universe, and for this, we need to implement the latest technologies. We need to accept that we will have a problem with people.

If we rebuild to "the way it was," there will be no one to work. We need to invest in the introduction of artificial intelligence, digitalization, and automation of everything possible. A significant percentage of our 10 billion UAH will go to these areas. In May, we created a special committee within the company responsible for implementing automation.

Maksym Tsymbal, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Pivdenny Bank

Pivdenny is a bank for medium and large Ukrainian businesses. Last year we did well: we signed agreements worth 7 billion UAH—these are both investment loans and working capital replenishments. We conducted an analysis and found that we reached a total investment volume of about $2 billion.

Three blocks of factors can be highlighted that stimulated business or created opportunities for investment last year:

• Forced investments related to the war;
• Investments in modernization to develop or at least stay at the same level and maintain market share;
• Investments in development, opportunities, and increasing margins.

The main conclusion from our research is that Ukrainian businesses that continue to invest are true patriots who believe in Ukraine.

To support Ukrainian businesses abroad, we have the Pivdenny Westbridge program, which we implement together with our subsidiary bank in Latvia. Since the beginning of 2023, thanks to the program, we have already implemented projects worth over €20 million, including financing the construction of the Farmak plant in Spain.