EBRD lends €70 million to Ukraine postal operator

This article is brought to you in association with EBRD.

• EBRD lends €70 million to Ukraine’s Nova Post to expand its delivery services
• Nova Post’s proposed growth strategy will benefit Ukraine’s businesses in wartime
• Company will build over 600 bomb shelters to protect personnel and customers

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is lending €70 million to Nova Post, a leading private postal and courier operator in Ukraine, to finance its investment programme for 2024.

“The loan will support the company’s long-term growth strategy, which envisages a transformation of its customer service model while keeping employees and clients safe in wartime,” said Arvid Tuerkner, the EBRD’s Managing Director for Ukraine and Moldova.

“We are supporting our longstanding client Nova Post in a project that will bring many benefits beyond purely commercial ones, such as enhanced safety, veterans reintegration and expansion of training opportunities for women. This is the type of project Ukraine needs the most during the ongoing war,” said Nandita Parshad, Managing Director of the EBRD’s Sustainable Infrastructure Group.

The EBRD finance can be provided in Ukrainian hryvnia or euros and benefits from a first-loss guarantee covering 10 per cent of the EBRD loan amount, which is provided by the Ukraine Investment Framework Municipal Infrastructure and Industrial Resilience (UIF MIIR) programme.

“For us, this agreement is the logical next step in our long-term partnership with the EBRD, as well as the confirmation of the Bank’s confidence in Nova Post as a reliable and stable partner. In addition, this is a recognition of the impact that the Nova Post development has on the Ukrainian businesses and the economy at large. said Petro Fokov, CFO of NOVA Group.

He added: “After all, the Bank’s representatives evaluate not only the project’s financial metrics, but also the beneficial effects which it can bring on a national level. The funds are raised on favourable terms and on a scale which could not be available from most domestic banks.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 initially hit Ukraine’s postal and delivery sector hard, but the parcel segment recovered quickly as people and businesses resumed their business activity. Nova Post has played a leading role in this recovery and now seeks to expand, which would in turn support the economic activity of small firms across the country.

The company wants to support future growth in the courier, express and parcel delivery segment by expanding its parcel locker network by a quarter and enabling it to run 24/7, updating hundreds of post offices and terminals, developing its branch network and building more than 600 “safety capsules” and shelters at its premises around the country.

Responding to labour market shortages and workforce disruption, the EBRD’s technical support will help to improve human resources policies through a dedicated capacity-building programme aligned with the company’s most pressing human capital needs. EBRD engagement will help Nova Post improve return-to-work pathways and in-work support systems for some 3,500 of its own staff currently serving in the army and other veterans returning to civilian life.

The EBRD’s engagement will also help the company to fill critical vacancies by broadening access to training and employment opportunities for women workers, return migrants and others with funding support from the Bank’s Action for Equality and Gender Multi-Donor Fund.

Nova Post is the main operating subsidiary of Nova Group, which is owned by two Ukrainian businessmen, Viacheslav Klymov and Volodymyr Popereshnyuk. It operates a network of over 30 000 service points and employs around 33,000 staff in Ukraine, serving over 11 million clients monthly. In 2023, Nova Post delivered over 412 million shipments.

The EBRD is Ukraine’s largest institutional investor. It has deployed €4.5 billion in the country since 2022 and has secured agreement for a further €4 billion capital increase to continue lending at these levels in wartime, with the potential for more once full reconstruction begins. 

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