Toronto trade show features Ukrainian business and know-how (07/21/96)

Toronto trade show features Ukrainian business and know-how

by Andrij Wynnyckyj
Toronto Press Bureau

TORONTO - While trade shows featuring large- and small-scale business from Ukraine have been held in the U.S. for three years now, Canada's first such exposition of Ukrainian entrepreneurship did not occur until Kozlova Enterprises Inc. (KEI), a firm established by two expatriates from the newly independent country now living in Canada, organized Ukraine and Partners XX-XXI.

Held at Toronto's Metro Convention Center from April 29 to May 3, it showcased the know-how, services, technology and wares of 203 various private and state-owned firms from Ukraine (as well as a few government agencies and ministries), and also featured a business conference and seminar that provided Ukrainian and Canadian merchants and manufacturers with up-to-date information about each other and about their respective markets.

In addition, it provided the venue for the official announcement of Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy's intention to travel to Ukraine. Liberal Sen. Stanley Haidasz revealed the host government's plans at an evening reception on May 1, after meeting and conferring informally with Ukraine's ambassador to Canada, Volodymyr Furkalo, who was also in attendance. The exact date was not set, however.

The trade show itself included 33 exposition booths laid out over a 60,000- square-foot space in the convention center's cavernous Exhibit Hall C.

The first booths, as befits those of companies ready to advertise, were the loudest and glitziest, and included the video terminals set up by Toronto-based Kontakt-TV, the Lviv-based Galitski Kontrakty business weekly/advertising agency, the Ottawa-based Canada-Ukraine Monitor magazine, and one of Ukraine's slickest and most aggressive outfits, the Kyiv-based Blitz-Inform Press.

Other displays constituted a vast array that included aluminum construction fittings from Brovary (near Kyiv), the Dniproenergo concern of mines and thermal (coal-fired) energy plants, a Kyivan eye microsurgery center, the Chernivtsi region's woodcarvings (set up by the oblast's regional administration), the TV and walkie-talkie producing Vesna Co. of Dnipropetrovske, the Lviv (vodka) and Uzhhorod (cognac) liquor producers, the Donetske-based First Ukrainian International Bank, the explosion-proof motors of Newcon-Electromash (with plants in Nova Kakhivka near Kherson and offices in a Toronto suburb), metallurgical giant Zaporozhstal from Zaporizhzhia, and the paints of Ukrlakofarba, whose representatives sought contracts to paint seagoing freighters.

From the Canadian side, the trade show co-sponsors, the Canada-Ukraine Chamber of Commerce (CUCC), had a booth, as did Manitoba's provincial trade agency, Petro Canada (also a sponsor, for whom KEI is the exclusive distributor of its lubrication products in Ukraine), the Ukrainian-Canadian-owned Sipco Petroleum Inc., the Access Air freight forwarding company and a handful of others. There were 54 Canadian exhibitors in all, according to the KEI's post-show records.

Other sponsors of the Ukraine and Partners exhibition were the Canada-Ukraine Policy and Trade Center, Ukraine's Ministry of Finance, the Ukraine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Dnipropetrovske-based Privatbank Commercial Bank, Blitz-Inform Press, the First Ukrainian National Bank and the giant ($1.5 billion in sales in 1995) chemical-industrial Kyiv-headquartered joint stock company Ukrresources.

In all KEI's figures suggested that just under 650 people paid to see the show and attend the business seminars and conferences.

Seminar and conference

One of the first items on the agenda, even before the exhibition booths were all set up, was the half-day "Doing Business in North America" seminar on April 29.

The entire contingent of entrepreneurs packed the convention center's Room 206 to hear presentations by officials from the Canadian government's department of foreign affairs and international trade (Jon Church), its Trade Facilitation Office (David E.F. Taylor) as well as Ontario provincial government's Enterprise Canada offices (Hugh Mackenzie) on where to invest in Canada, how to make business activity more efficient and how to market one's products to Canadians.

Initial welcomes were delivered by Ihor Zaks, the chairman of KEI, and by Federal Liberal Member of Parliament Jesse Flis from the heavily Ukrainian Toronto riding of High Park-Swansea.

Gerald Fedchun, president of the CUCC, offered a word of encouragement for Ukrainian entrepreneurs making the transition to the world of capitalist investments, saying that the West is undergoing thoroughgoing changes in its management and productivity structures as well.

Ihor Sanin, head of the trade mission at Ukraine's Embassy in Ottawa, once again demonstrated that his compatriots have an able point man in Canada. He outlined Canadian legislation governing imports and the country's taxation system, and provided figures indicating what Canada's import needs are and what areas Ukrainian entrepreneurs should concentrate on.

Mr. Sanin reported a 12 percent increase in trade between the two countries in 1995.

On May 1-2, the "Doing Business in Ukraine" conference was held to coincide with the trade show. The first day's proceedings were opened with an address by Ambassador Furkalo, who hailed the show's forward-looking title ("XX-XXI") and thanked KEI for organizing the event. He declared that the preparatory phase for Ukraine's accession to the World Trade Organization is "practically finished," and thanked Canada's minister of international trade, Art Eggleton, for offering his country's support for Ukraine's effort to join the WTO.

Chaired by Winnipeg-based lawyer Andrew Ogaranko (from the firm of Buchwald-Asper-Gallagher-Henteleff), presentations covered such topics as "Sustainable Development as a Key Issue for the Ukrainian Economy," "The Legal Framework for Doing Business in Ukraine," "Structure and Perspectives of Ukrainian Export-Import Policy," and "Commercial Risks in Ukraine," as well as outlines of the country's natural, industrial, technological and labor resources.

G. Warfield Hobbs of the U.S.-based consulting firm Ammonite Resources provided a view on how CIS-based entrepreneurs could find an "appropriate foreign capital partner."

Jaroslav Kinach, a Ukrainian Canadian currently serving as the Kyiv resident representative of the influential European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, offered an analysis of fiscal and monetary policies in Ukraine.

For Ms. Kozlova, originally a chemical engineer from Dniprodzerzhynske and now the president of her eponymous Winnipeg-based concern, the show was an unqualified success. "Many new business relationships were established between Canadians and Ukrainians at this exhibition," the KEI president said. "These relationships are the beginning of an emerging economic union between North America and Ukraine, a union that has the potential to create prosperity for Canadians, Americans and Ukrainians alike. We are proud to play a role in this process."

Kozlova Enterprises does not intend to rest on its laurels. Mr. Zaks said the firm intends to host a number of Ukrainian trade missions throughout North America in 1997, in Toronto, Montreal, Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas and New York City.

For further information contact Kozlova Enterprises Inc. at 416-360 Main St., Winnipeg, Manitoba R3C 3Z3; (204) 989-2073; fax, (204) 942-2625; e-mail: kozlovae@mts.net.

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