UKRAINE

These days I’m worrying about my friends in

Ukraine. And I'm probably not alone. Each of

us can think about how to help people who are

on the run or in a war zone. The response from

neighboring countries has been absolutely

wonderful. I have helped in similar situations

before and I am helping now.

I think of my former colleagues from the international consulting and engineering firm

where I worked for twenty years. I know there

are at least ten modelers in that company, so

I assume they will be reading these lines. Their

international team of over two thousand people includes more than a hundred Ukrainians.

They have offices in Kyiv and Lviv. I'm in touch

with some of them. To give you a little idea of

what they do, they design buildings, mostly industrial, in 3D software and then manage their

construction. In some disciplines, they have

become a hub that is used by the entire network of that global firm. Thanks to them, manufacturing plants of well-known companies

are being set up in Europe and Asia. They are

excellent international consultants, designers,

and project managers. About a third of them

work on projects in Russia. I hope they will all

be all right.

I realised there are some parallels with our

modelling industry. In fact, Ukraine is one of

the world's model manufacturing centers.

There are about twenty companies with international stature producing kits and accessories. And many of them also work with 3D

software and other advanced technologies in

the industry.

I'll try to list the Ukrainian companies and if

I forget someone, I apologize: Ace, Aim Fan

Model, Amodel, Armory, Arsenal Model Group,

Art Model, Avis, Clear Prop., Condor, Dora

Wings, Master Box, Military Wheels, MiniArt,

Modelsvit, ICM, ResKit, Skif, Roden, Unimodel, USCP and Wingsy. Not to forget the model

retailers and companies that produce kits for

customers in the European Union.

Some of these companies we work with,

others we compete with, but we keep our fingers crossed for all of them and offer help if

their teams need it.

They need your support too.

Slava Ukraini!

Jan Bobek

March 2022

INFO Eduard

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