Kovlar Group is studying the EU market but is concentrating on domestic demand

The Ukrainian manufacturer of passive fire protection products Kovlar Group is studying the European market but is focusing on creating products for the domestic one, said Kostiantyn Kalafat, director of Kovlar Group LLC, in an exclusive interview with the agency “Interfax-Ukraine“.

“We are actively studying the European market and working on harmonizing technical documentation and conformity assessment procedures. As for exports, it is a challenge, because the European market for niche products like ours is already established, and in matters of safety the customer prefers more established solutions, so it is extremely hard to find one’s own customer,” he said.

According to him, the main obstacle to a quick entry into EU markets at present is the complexity of certification procedures in wartime – foreign auditors and technical experts are not always able to come to Ukraine to carry out the necessary audit and technical inspection. Strategically, however, entering European markets remains in the company’s plans.

At the same time, Kovlar Group’s products are competitive in quality and cost. “Fire protection is a high-tech and knowledge-intensive industry in which proven characteristics are decisive. Over the past 10 years, the requirements for thin-layer fire protection coatings have doubled owing to the need to ensure the stability of metal structures during a fire – from 90 to 180 minutes, and we are trying to keep up with this trend. In some parameters – system efficiency, optimal layer thickness, stability of results – some of our solutions are not inferior to, and sometimes even surpass, European analogues,” Kalafat stressed.

At present the company’s priority is the domestic market, especially given the growing demand for Ukrainian materials in connection with large-scale recovery and reconstruction programs.

“In this context our advantage over imports is obvious: short logistics, speed of supply, the ability to react quickly to changes in design solutions, to provide technical consultations instantly and to visit sites. In wartime and in the post-war period, the speed of engineering decisions and the stability of supply are often critically important. We hope that, once the wartime risks are over, the quality of the projects we have implemented will become an additional argument for the effective realization of the export potential of Ukrainian passive fire protection systems,” he says.

Kovlar Group LLC was founded in 2015 in Kyiv and is the largest manufacturer of passive fire protection products in Ukraine. According to Opendatabot, the company’s statutory capital is UAH 1.2 million, and its ultimate beneficiaries are Kostiantyn Kalafat (40%), Andrii Ozeichuk (35%) and Liubov Vakhitova (25%). The company’s revenue for 2024 was UAH 91 million 370.5 thousand, twice as much as in 2023, and net profit was UAH 13.4 million, 1.7 times more than in 2023. In the first quarter of 2025 the company’s revenue was UAH 13.5 million and net income UAH 1 million 983 thousand.