The factory will be built by the Swedish company Eskaro and the total project value will be EUR 10.6 million. The project will also be financed by Swedfund and the Eskaro Group.
The new factory will replace local production of oil based paint. Production will be based on a closed circuit, which will not cause environmentally harmful discharges into surrounding waterways.

“One of the advantages in producing waterborne paint is that one can avoid discharges of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are emitted from oil based paint. This project is expected to reduce discharges of VOCs by some 870 tonnes per year,” says Karl-Johan Lehtinen, Senior Manager at NEFCO’s environmental unit.

Some VOCs can cause cancer. VOCs also contribute to the creation of ground-level ozone, which in turn can harm vegetation in the ecology.

Eskaro owns and operates four similar factories in Finland, Estonia, Russia and Belarus, which produce a total of some 50,000 tonnes of paint per year. Despite the fact that Eskaro does not own any production facilities in Ukraine, the company has succeeded in obtaining 7.2 per cent of the Ukrainian paint market. The new factory in Odessa will reduce dependency on paint transports from Eskaro’s other factories, which is expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by some 800 tonnes annually.

“Eskaro has sold waterborne paint in Ukraine for over 15 years already. When we started out, oil based paints made up over 95 per cent of the Ukrainian market. Now the waterborne, environmentally-friendly paint products constitute some 30 per cent of the market. The political stability and improved financial situation in the country have inspired us to make the final move and start up our own production in Ukraine, says Pertti Pihlström,” Chairman of the Board at the Eskaro Group.

“We hope that this project will generate a demonstration effect, which will trigger interest in similar projects elsewhere in Ukraine. We are, in other words, inviting Ukrainian companies to make use of our financial instruments in order to expand environmentally cleaner production in the country,” says Torben Vindeløv, Vice President at NEFCO.

NEFCO’s Ukrainian loan portfolio currently comprises 56 projects valued at EUR 160 million.

NEFCO is an international financial institution owned by the five Nordic countries and mainly finances environmentally-related projects and investments in Russia, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Belarus in order to generate positive environmental effects for the Nordic region. At present, the funds administered by the corporation are valued at some EUR 383 million.

For more information, please contact:
Torben Vindeløv, Vice President, NEFCO, tel. +358 50 520 7249
Karl-Johan Lehtinen, Senior Manager, NEFCO, tel. +358 40 593 1239
Pertti Pihlström, Chairman of the Board, Eskaro, tel. +358 50539 0410