The "Biosphere" corporation, a leading player in the market for home goods production and distribution, plans to increase its revenue by an average of 20% in 2025 compared to 2024—at least up to 8.5 billion UAH, as reported by the founder and CEO of the corporation, Andrey Zdesenko.
"The corporation's business is actively developing, growing both in Ukraine and abroad. All groups, key businesses reached around 7.5 billion UAH in 2024 (revenue - IF-U). Compared to the previous year, this represents a growth of about 20%, and we aim for a similar 20% average for the next year," he stated on February 26 during a Business Breakfast organized by Forbes.
According to him, the corporation became less profitable last year due to "rising raw material costs, logistics, energy prices, inflation, and salaries."
When asked about the profit margin, Zdesenko replied: "We need to look into it."
"However, we have a benchmark, so the levels vary across different businesses. For example, the tea segment we are investing in is currently unprofitable and significantly so. We are heavily investing in expansion, the Ukrainian market, advertising, and marketing. We are restructuring, which has resulted in a serious loss. We plan to break even by the end of the year and then start generating profit," he clarified.
He also noted that last year, 70% of the revenue came from Ukraine, while 30% was from abroad.
"Our ambition is to achieve a 50-50 split between Ukraine and foreign markets in three years. We do not consider our European business as mere exports. For instance, in Romania, we have production, a brand, our own sales team, marketing, and an office in Bucharest. For us, the Romanian market, just like the Austrian market, is a domestic market," Zdesenko explained.
Speaking about the development of the Graff tea brand, which entered the Ukrainian market over a year ago, Zdesenko mentioned that approximately EUR 5 million has been invested in production, equipment, and raw materials.
He estimated Graff's market share at 3-5%, with plans to increase it to 10% by the end of the year.
"We haven't just established tea production; last year we acquired an interesting factory for producing professional chemicals for our Biosphere Professional line. The top manager became a partner and invested his own money," the CEO of "Biosphere" shared.
Zdesenko specified that the factory is located in Slavutych, "not far from the Belarusian border."
"Thus, we already have six production facilities in Ukraine. The new direction is called IMO," he said.
According to opendatadot, LLC "IMO" ("Industrial Cleaning Equipment") was registered in Kyiv in 2016, with Zdesenko becoming the ultimate beneficiary in December 2023, holding a 79% stake, while Sergey Agibalov owns 20%.
The "Biosphere" corporation has been operating in Ukraine for over 25 years. Its product portfolio includes more than 1,000 items under 16 proprietary brands ("Freken BOK," "Fainy Bonus," Vortex, LikeIt, Smile, Smile Baby, Superfresh, Bambik, Novita, Lady Cotton, Alufix, PRO service, GoWipes, "Chysta Pobeda," Pany Blisk, and PoketMon). The corporation is an official distributor of international brands such as TORK, Selpak, and Fantom.
The corporation's facilities in Ukraine comprise factories with a total production area of 35,000 sq. m in Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv, and Khmelnytskyi regions, as well as logistics complexes covering 30,000 sq. m. Together with the French Groupe Lemoine, "Biosphere" also owns a factory in Estonia for cotton products with an area of 8,500 sq. m.
At the end of 2023, a new FOOD direction was launched with its own production of Cupsoul, featuring tea brands such as Graff, Ritz Barton, and others.