Public joint-stock company Motor Sich (Zaporizhia) in 2013 will continue realizing a long-term program on the retrofitting of production facilities, sending over $80 million for the purpose, top managers of the company have told Interfax-Ukraine.
“We’re continuing a long-term program on the retrofitting of production facilities: this year it is planned that around UAH 650 million [$82 million] will be spent on these purposes,” a representative of top managers said, adding that the annual investment volume of Motor Sich in retrofitting of production facilities and upgrades amounts to some Hr 700 million.
“A new credit resource was recently taken with the support of PrivatBank: this [will be used to buy] new foreign metal-cutting equipment that can be used for both helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft production,” the representative said.
PrivatBank last week reported that the bank had provided Motor Sich with international funding of EUR 8 million to purchase equipment.
The bank said that credit funds of about EUR 8 million, raised by the company as part of the programs of international financing by Poland’s Bank Krajowego and Germany’s Commerzbank Aktiengesellschaft, will be used to purchase new modern equipment from the Polish and Slovak partners of the enterprise.
“We’re talking about long-term resources raised as part of pre-export financing, organized with the support of PrivatBank,” the press service of the bank said.
Motor Sich is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of engines for aircraft and industrial gas turbines. It supplies its products to 106 countries.
The Ukrainian versions of the Soviet Mi-8T and Mi-2 multipurpose helicopters that are being modernized by Motor Sich have good market prospects, experts say. In September 2012, there are plans to design a light attack helicopter based on the Ukrainian version of the multipurpose Mi-2, the Mi-2MSB1 – MSB-2MO.
