From the speech of Sergey Bykov, a member of the supervisory board «Ukrainian dairy company» at the V Ukrainian Conference «Dairy Business 2012», held in November 1, 2012

Dairy cattle — the way from a social project to business

Historically, the USSR dairy cattle breeding was a social project, which provided employment of the rural population, but not industry profitability. Over time, the situation has changed, though not as quickly and dramatically as we would like. Market offered to producers technological innovations, but their unsystematic application did not give the desired results.

«Agro-Soyuz» was the first Ukrainian company, which has managed to build a new dairy complex and where was applied a systematic approach to milk production. It helped to achieve high animals’ productivity. The complex started to work in 2000. Subsequently, in 2006 Ukrainian Milk Company in Kiev region began operating dairy complex for 4 thousand dairy herd. At that time, the project cost to the company $ 65 million. So far complex is the largest in Europe. As remarked Sergei V. Bykov, such production scale, might not always be good. However, the concentration and consolidation is a well-known global trend. Business came in agricultural production, and its main goal was to make a profit. In the current difficult conditions this can be achieved thanks to the large volume of high quality raw materials. The crisis is usually subdued by large companies and small ones, unfortunately, disappear.

Read more information in the magazine «Milk and Farm» № 6 (13), December 2012