The Nova Poshta company, the leader in express delivery in Ukraine, will receive a loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) for construction of a parcel sorting terminal in Khmelnytsky.

According to a press release spread among journalists at a press conference devoted to the signing of the loan agreement in Kyiv on Wednesday, the decision to provide the financing was made by the EBRD board on January 9, 2018.

The new, automated parcel sorting terminal will have modern equipment. Its average capacity would exceed the usual capacity three times, to 8,500 parcels per hour. The total parcel sorting capacity will be 18,000 parcels per hour.

It is planned to build the terminal during one year.

Nova Poshta CFO Petro Fokov said that the company decided to use the borrowed funds to increase efficiency of transactions, in particular, thanks to automation and introduction of modern technologies requiring the creation of modern infrastructure. The loan is a seven year multicurrency loan.

According to the press release, the implementation of the terminal construction project in Khmelnytsky would the improvement of fleet utilisation by 25% on inter-city routes by the end of 2020; and the reduction of annual CO2 emissions by 1,570 tonnes by the end of 2020.

In the future energy efficiency is planned, for example, the installation of solar panels, LED lighting and other solutions.

"Our strategy for the next five years is to fundamentally update the company's infrastructure in quality and speed. We plan to build modern automated parcel sorting terminals in seven key cities of Ukraine. We chose Khmelnytsky first, since it is a national transport hub, a transit point between the western region and the rest of the country," the co-owner of Nova Poshta Viacheslav Klimov said.

He said that the customers will feel the effect from construction of the terminal in 2019.