Friday, September 27, 2013

Kirovohrad, Eukraine

Dear Readers,

Tonight I find myself in Kirovohrad, Ukraine.  We have just visited a honey processing plant that is slowly coming into its own called ATS-Ukraine (see later post)  It is owned by two French partners who have decided  to attempt to export Ukrainian honey to the EU.  They are encountering interesting problems, but I don't have time to discuss them tonight as I finish four days tomorrow of constant traveling around central Ukraine. 

Tomorrow we  go to Ulman and then back to Kiev.  Apimondia 43 starts the day after so I will try to bring some of what I learned on this four-day pretour into my other posts.  The biggest observation so far is that our tourist group is kind of a pioneer.  It is clear that Ukraine is gearing up to cater to tourists, but all facilities are not yet in place, including adequate hotels in all regions.  This is also true for other industries; we are staying in the first hotel chain in the country (Reikartz), which was started by Belgans in 2009; and then there's the honey exporter we  visited, to be the first of this kind of thing here.  More later as my battery on this tablet is about to to expire.

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