The core business activity of the ‘Rusynska Miasna Company’ (RMC) is pig breeding. Despite the COVID pandemic, the five employees of the company are safe and healthy. Keeping the required social distance is not hard in this type of business, and additional measures, such as the introduction of personal protection measures, ensured that employees and management were also largely unaffected by COVID-19 during meetings and personal interactions.

At the end of 2020, the situation on the pork market in Ukraine, as well as around the world, was unstable and unpredictable. However, in the spring and summer months of 2020, Ukrainian pig farmers were in a better situation than their counterparts in the EU, since abroad many slaughterhouses were closed due to outbreaks of coronavirus among workers, resulting in disruptions in the supply chain and the industry in Europe.

RMC’s management is optimistic and confident about its future, as local food supply has become more system relevant than ever during the pandemic and meat is always in high demand in Ukraine. Although cafes and restaurants are closed, consumption is growing slowly but steadily.

To support the growth in the domestic and export markets, RMC already invested in a Semi-Trailer at the end of 2019, supported by the EU4Business-EBRD Credit Line loan of €92,213 financed by the OTPL, just before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and invested in the purchase of equipment for farming and fattening of pigs in February 2021. The last investment project with a loan of €250,837 from Bank Lviv was verified in March 2021. The 10 per cent grant payments on both projects certainly helped the company to make additional investments into the realisations of its growth targets, as well as in protecting workers under the new conditions.