Following the Ukraine recovery conference in June, the UBBC was formally launched at ZHA architects with founding members and supporters. Over 100 people attended the launch including UK and Ukrainian businesses, government, and trade bodies.
Baroness Nicholson (President of UBBC) announced the formation of UBBC to respond to the opportunities for British and Ukraine business in rebuilding Ukraine. She explained that 13 years ago she successfully founded the Iraq Britain Business Council with the support of Christophe Michels. IBBC had similar objective of supporting the rebuilding of Iraq, as a membership driven organisation, and fully intends to do the same with Ukraine. With UKRs amazing natural and manmade resources we will form a partnership with UK to offer what Britain and our international partners can offer UKR. So, we appeal to companies to join us in this endeavour’.
Nusrat Ghani, Minister for Economic Security addressed the group and outlined some of the opportunities that emerged from the recovery conference and the priority sectors to focus on including rare minerals, aerospace, construction, Tech and renewable energy and logistics.
Dmitro Natalukha, Chair of the Economics Affairs Committee, Parliament of Ukraine said, ‘my role is to align the UK and UKR parliaments politically and ensure everyone is on the same page. The UK is an example to UKR as a resilience country who overcame previous war struggles and knows the reality of what happened in 2013 and how this led to the current situation. UKR will prevail and UK through partnership with UK and others will create a new world where democracy and justice willl never let us down.’
Sergiy Tvivkach CEO of Ukraine Investment said ‘UKR is focused on improving of the investment climate in Ukraine, and we have made over 20 expert recommendations to state authorities on reforming of strategic markets, i.e. energy, chemical, retail, healthcare, forestry, and agricultural sector. Ukraine’s greatest assets are its “brains and grains”, which drive the innovation and opportunities to be discovered in Ukraine’s agri-food value chain; the growth of European and global supply-chain manufacturing clusters in the country’s fast-growing regions; and in the development of oil, gas and renewable energy resources are essential to Ukraine’s energy independence. Ukraine is open for business!
Andrew Mitchell, Head of Department of Trade said ‘recovery in Ukraine must be a private sector led recovery for the long term. Governments can set the conditions for business, including war insurance support, but we all now need to turn the recovery conference into practical actions.’
UBBC has a core group of founding members, including G4S, ZHA Architects, Serco, SSB construction, Menzies and more to be announced. For companies interested to join us please contact: london@ukrainebritainbusiness.org