The well-known Kharkiv machine-building enterprise “Vector” can no longer formally be called Kharkiv’s company because nowadays it does not produce machine tools here. The russian enemy, which is methodically destroying the city, did not miss: its destructive missile did not miss even “Vector”. However, she did not destroy everything she could. According to the head of the company Serhii Golubkin, when it became clear that the enemy, failing to capture Kharkiv, would destroy it with shelling, most of the equipment was taken out of the city.

The plant stopped working on the first day of the war. Most of the workers decided to escape from the shelling in their dachas and in a few days found themselves under occupation, because the dachas are not far from the border with Russia. Serhii himself coordinated the evacuation of families who were unable to leave Kharkiv themselves. He was often involved in volunteer evacuation work in Bukovina, where he has friends. That is why I decided to connect the future existence of my company with Bukovyna.

While rescuing people, he also saved the machine tools of the company. First of all, he says, he wanted to export machine tools to Bukovyna, that is, customers’ machines at different stages of readiness. Since the beginning of the war, the Kharkiv Vector was loaded with orders for three months, and a lot of finished and unfinished products were collected – for fifty wagons. By the beginning of summer, when the enterprise was destroyed, almost all the client’s machines were saved. Actually, unfortunately, not all of them.

According to the plan of the owner of the company, the production that did not start in Kharkiv should have started in Bukovina. In fact, it was not a real relaxation of the enterprise, because it is necessary to create production in a new place practically from scratch. Directly in Chernivtsi, as predicted, it was not possible to do this, because local managers of enterprises that had free space and could rent it out, taking advantage of the situation, drove up outrageous prices – one charged up to eleven dollars per square meter! How much would it have to be given for one and a half thousand squares of the required area?! In the end, they settled thirty kilometres from the regional centre, on the territory of the Hlybock community.

It is important to note that, in general, the production of TM “Vector” machines did not stop during the war. The main Kharkiv division of the company stopped working, but the Zhytomyr branch, production in Kazakhstan, and the factory in Brno, Czech Republic, were and are still working. We were preparing to create two more factories last year – approximately in Poland and Portugal – but the war-damaged them. Serhii Golubkin also has a number of related industries under his command, which are not directly related to machine tool construction, but is also successful in business, because, like machine tool construction, they are based on technological innovations. One of them manufactures modular houses, in particular for export, another develops alternative energy sources that have no analogues, and another subsidiary has established the production of candles, the need for which has increased in a country that has found itself in an electrical blackout. Thanks to this, funds should generally be sufficient for the establishment of new production in Bukovyna without collateral crediting. The main problem is that it is difficult to form a team due to the lack of highly qualified personnel here, which is necessary for high-tech, innovation-oriented machine tool manufacturing, which was the plant in Kharkiv, and in general, Vector was and still is. And those that do happen are ruled by European salaries, which resettlement companies are not yet “affordable”. This, of course, slows down the start of production, but it will not become an insurmountable obstacle. The basis is: about a dozen workers from Kharkiv still moved with their families to Chernivtsi. Some are abroad, and some, unfortunately, are no longer alive.

– Have you already fully settled with the customers with those machines that were managed to be taken out of Kharkiv?

– Almost with everyone. Only some technologically complex models remained unfinished, which could be completed on the equipment destroyed at our Kharkiv factory. There is no such possibility here yet. But, we are sure, it will be. And here, as in Kharkiv until recently, we will be able to produce exclusive models of machines, offering clients processing technologies embodied in machines that previously did not exist not only in Ukraine. It is thanks to our ability to create innovative and exclusive machine models for the specific needs of customers that the “Vector” trademark is popular and in demand not only on the Ukrainian market and not only in the woodworking industry. Not only in demand but also, I will say without exaggeration, sometimes irreplaceable. Thanks to this, even in this economically difficult time, we have customers from different countries standing in line for the fulfilment of their orders.

– Are you creating a production in Bukovina as a temporary one during the war?

– I won’t guess in advance – we’ll see how things go here, but I would like to leave the production here even after the victory.

–  So we wish you success in this.