Milk Alliance

• Milk Alliance is a group of companies which includes five enterprises producing cheese, milk and dairy products, enterprises for the collection and processing of milk as well as companies which carry out sales of products in Ukraine and abroad.
• The holding includes the Pyriatyn Cheese Plant in the Poltava region and the Bashtanska Cheese Plant in the Mykolaiv region, the Zolotonosha Butter-Making Combine (Cherkasy region), the Yagotynsky Butter Plant and the Yagotynske for Children branch in the Kyiv region.
• The products are manufactured under the brands Pyriatyn, Slavia, Yagotynske, Yagotynske for children, Hopsy, Zlatokrai and Milk Alliance.

• The company is the leading enterprise in the milk industry of Ukraine. The holding takes 22% of the market.
• In 2019, they produced 342,000 tons of milk and 19,200 tons of cheese. The total sales volume of the holding is UAH 5.77 billion. In the same year, the holding invested more than UAH 200 million in the company development.
• It is the leading enterprise in whey powder production and its export.

• The group was founded in 2006 by Oleksandr Derkach and Fedir Shpyg (died in an accident on March 31, 2020). The businessmen invested the earnings from selling Bank Aval. The Head of the Supervisory Board is Sergei Vovchenko.
• Since 2009, the sole shareholder of the company is MilCo Holding N.V. (Netherlands).
• Before the war in Donbass, 60% of the Milk Alliance cheese production, were sold to Russia.

• In 2016, the chief engineer of the Milk Alliance hit a child in the kindergarten Olymp on Sribnokilskaya Street in Kyiv, so a criminal case was open. In 2018, the case was closed, as the court considered that the statute of limitations for the crime had expired.
• In 2016, representatives of the board of the All-Ukrainian Association for the Protection of Consumer Rights "Consumer Trust" announced that Yagotynske for children production consisted antibiotics, namely — chloramphenicol (levomycetin).

In the court, Yagotynsky Butter Plant proved that there were no antibiotics in their products. The public organization was obliged to refute the published information.

• In 2017, Tetiana Chumak, a resident of Odessa, posted an angry post and video on Facebook about the quality of Milk Alliance milk. Representatives of the holding said that they were filing a lawsuit against the woman.

Though, in 2018, the parties agreed to an amicable agreement. The woman agreed to publish a refutation in social networks, in return, Yagotynsky Butter Plant refused their claims and did not demand UAH 100,000 for moral damage.

Oleksandr Derkach denied all the accusations:

• In 2019, the holding stopped advertising their production on ZIK channel (the channel is associated with Putin's relative, Viktor Medvedchuk). According to the holding representatives, the company do not want to be in the list of the companies that support Russian aggression.

• According to the official website, each enterprise of the Milk Alliance holding quarterly allocates one-time transfers of funds and products for various charitable projects. They help ATO soldiers and their families.
• In 2016, the holding became a pioneer in Europe to deliver its products to the European Union. 150 kg of dairy butter under TM Zlatokray and 560 kg of hard cheese under TM Pyriatyn and Slavіa as well as UHT milk under TM Yagotynske were sent to Bulgaria.
• Since 2018, the company exports of hard, processed and soft cheeses to the United Arab Emirates and the United States of America.
• In 2018, the TM Yagotynske began cooperation with the Tabletochki Charity Foundation. The money raised within the charitable project was used to purchase medicines for children with cancer who are being patients in the state regional cancer centers.