Today’s article in the “NIBULON’s Pride” series is dedicated to the employees of the Trade, Financial, and Technical Departments. For them, there seem to be no impossible tasks, but there is a main goal – to demonstrate the best results and surpass their last year’s achievements.
Sofiia El Marvani joined the Voznesenska branch team in 2016. Initially, she worked in the accounting department. Since April 2023, she has held the position of a regional specialist of the commercial department. In 2024, Sofiia achieved the best grain procurement results among NIBULON’s elevators in the 2023-24 MY, reaching a total of 205,914 tons of grain. For this achievement, she was awarded in the “First Among Equals” category.
“I believe that such high results are based on several factors. Firstly, we offered farmers competitive purchase prices. The farmers chose us after comparing the time and money they needed to spend on logistics to ports, the waiting time for grain shipment, and logistics to the branch. Additionally, high-quality and accurate laboratory tests and the speed of unloading trucks at the branch allowed farmers to deliver grain to our elevator twice a day. With the introduction of the Supplier’s Account, we also completely switched to paperless document management. This system is convenient for both contractors and employees; the amount of paper is reduced, ensuring quick access to each document, and providing the supplier data.
In our work, communication with suppliers is just as important. No matter how convenient or automated the processes at the enterprise are, we must not forget about the human factor: agricultural producers will always prefer to cooperate with a company where they feel respect for themselves and their hard work,” says Sofiia.
When asked what motivates her to achieve maximum results, she answers:
“I believe that the main competitor of every person is their past self. If we talk about my work, I can always look at my performance for the past period and compare it with the current situation. This helps me understand whether I need to improve something in my work to catch up. It’s a kind of competition with myself – ‘Can I do more?’ Of course, we also communicate with our colleagues, we know their procurement plans. There is some healthy competition between us, which stimulates everyone to work even better and to contribute to the development of the company.”
Thanks to the coordinated, well-organized, and efficient work of the leading energy engineer of the Technical Department, Roman Bdiukhin, a gas supply network approximately 6 km long was constructed and connected to the branch in just three months. For this achievement he was awarded the “Master of Energy Solutions” award.
“Last year, we installed two powerful Strahl 1200 FR 8 grain dryers at the Khmilnyk elevator complex. This enabled the company to provide high-quality corn drying services and immediately load grain into hopper wagons. That is why there was a need to ensure stable gas supply. Typically, such projects take at least a year. They include not only construction but also many organizational issues, such as obtaining technical specifications for the project, creating project documentation, and obtaining permits from relevant authorities. Our situation was also complicated by the fact that the 6-km pipeline had to cross land plots, farmers’ sown fields, rivers, roads and Ukrzaliznytsia railway tracks. We had to obtain permits for the work from all of the parties. This is a huge amount of work, the implementation of which involved many specialists from different departments. Completing it in just three months is truly a record-breaking performance. I am grateful to all my colleagues who contributed to implementing the project!” noted Roman.
The head of the collateral and insurance sector of the Financial Department, Serhii Hotsuliak, was recognized as the “Restructuring Expert of the Year” for the successful restructuring of the Ukrainian portion of the company’s debt.
“Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, NIBULON has lost 68% of its assets. The exit from the Mykolaiv port was also blocked. Our main Transshipment Terminal has stopped working. Despite the losses, NIBULON has continued its activities and has invested about $70 million in Ukraine’s agricultural sector since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. To sustain business operations, it was extremely important to restructure the debt and obtain the necessary flexibility to fulfill financial obligations during the recovery period.
More than 10 employees from the banking relations department and the company’s top management, including the CEO, CEO advisor and CFO, were involved in the restructuring process. The result of the restructuring was preceded by countless meetings with banks to agree and improve the lending conditions for NIBULON. My role was to proofread the contractual agreements with Ukrainian banks, draw up protocols of disagreements under agreements with banks, support the conclusion of loan agreements, and register security agreements with a notary. I believe that our team put considerable effort into contributing to the restoration of stable work and further development of the business to ensure sustainable food security,” notes our colleague.
The chief specialist of the support and reporting department within the Trade Department, Maryna Tydynian, received the “Master of Analytical Solutions” award for her significant contribution to the development of a system of analytical management reports and the automation of data collection.
Maryna began working for the company in 2013 in the trade department (now the commercial department). In 2022, when NIBULON embarked on the digitalization and automation of business processes, she joined the newly created Middle Office. The main mission of the Middle Office was to create a centralized management reporting system for the Trade Department.
“We understood that the key to effective optimization would be to transfer existing reports from Excel to the ERP system and their further improvement. As a result, we not only automated data processing but also established the processes of entering information between our departments in the IT-Enterprise environment. Thanks to Power BI, we created a management reporting system,” explains Maryna.
This is a large amount of work, which was accomplished through the coordinated efforts of specialists from our commercial department, logistics department, foreign contracts execution department, and, of course, the IT department. To date, a number of critical business processes have been automated, and this work is ongoing.
What benefits did this bring to the company? Today, we receive all the necessary information in a single environment, in a standardized form. This has significantly accelerated all work processes, ensuring quick access to up-to-date data and faster calculations.
“Previously, management reports were generated no more than once a day. Now, thanks to automated processes, we can receive data several times a day, which gives us mobility, flexibility, and the ability to quickly respond to market changes. After all, the speed and accuracy of information is the basis for effective management and decision-making,” emphasizes Maryna.
Earlier, we wrote about the director of the Mykolaiv cluster, Valentyn Umirov, who received an award in the “Leader in Effective Managerial Decisions” category, and the chief dispatcher of the Shipping Company Serhii Aleksieiev, who received the “Steel Dispatcher” award.
