Global Affairs Canada has invested $3 million to help a co-operative of dairy farmers near Lviv set up a milk-processing plant in the Ukraine.
The plant will produce milk, yogurt, sour cream and hard and soft cheeses using milk from the local dairy co-ops.
Those co-ops will also have a stake in the management of the plant, which will employ 30 to 40 people.
The co-operatives were established along the lines of Agropur in Quebec.
Construction was already well under way when war broke out last year and disrupted every aspect of life in the now embattled country.
Investors at first shied away from putting their money into a project in conflict zone, said Camil Cote, the project officer for SOCODEVI, a development agency based in Quebec City that is spearheading the project.
The invasion put a stop to the work for about three months, until Canada offered another $2-million to get it started again.
“Just like the whole of Ukraine, we survived the winter,” Cote said in an interview with the Globe and Mail from Nicaragua.
“We have (had a) few dangerous situations near the plant,” said Andriy Blinovskyy, who manages the project on behalf of a corporation of local dairy co-ops called Nabil.
“We have missile explosion near the plant, when the electricity transformer station was destroyed maybe 10 kilometres from the plant.”
That explosion late last year forced workers to continue building through the winter without heat, using a generator for power.
When it’s up and running, the plant will mainly supply the Lviv region with locally produced products. The equipment and the brand new, gleaming milk tanks in each room carry Canadian flags.
