Dear platform members,
Thank you for attending this year’s second platform meeting of the Agrifood platform Ukraine. The Ambassador of Ukraine to the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Andriy Kostin, kicked off the event with an inspiring speech about the importance of cooperation between Ukraine and the Netherlands. The new Special Envoy for Ukraine Joost Klarenbeek further elaborated on this, being determined to support Dutch companies aiming to contribute to Ukraine’s reconstruction. Martijn Moonen of RVO gave a brief explanation the various financial instruments that can be used for this, including DHI, Impact Clusters, PSDToolkit and the newly launched UPF3.
The following topic presented at the event were updates from the private sector. Malou Vijfhuizen gave a presentation about the Agrifood platform’s cluster approach: Dmytro Kyryliuk elaborated about the Dairy Cluster, Kateryna Volianska shared her experiences of the Covered Cultivation Cluster and Willem Bouw introduced the study to Novel Crops. Subsequently, Bas Godschalk presented the results of DTESS’s study on geothermal energy for greenhouse development in Ukraine. Tijmen Blok introduced Hippotainer’s ‘container farmsystem’ as a solution for fresh food production in inaccesible areas and as relief aid. Jan van Hoogen gave an update about Agrico’s activities in Ukraine, and the resilience of their business and people in Ukraine in times of war.
The last section was about access to finance. Reinoud Nuijten elaborated on the usage of international financial instruments in the reconstruction of Ukraine. Miriam Valstar and Raymond Beimers showed the broad range of financial solutions that Invest International can provide for those investing in Ukraine. Mackenzie Masaki presented how Atradius covers insurance to Dutch organizations contributing to rebuilding Ukraine.
It was good to see so many of you attending either physically or online. Hopefully it proved to be an inspiring and activating event!
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