Two Baltic manufacturers, Latvia’s Finieris and Lithuania’s DUV, have joined forces to produce wooden beds for Ukrainians. They are used to equip the country’s bomb shelters in metro stations and schools.
The modular beds, which can accommodate up to four or five people at a time, have already been delivered to 18 stations of the Kyiv Metro.
“In the event of a prolonged air raid or underground stations operating exclusively in the shelter mode, the modular benches can be transformed into beds. Another advantage of the design is its compact size when disassembled, ease of assembly and moderate weight,” the Kyiv Metro said in a statement.
Easy to assemble, without a single screw, these beds are essential in the locations of Ukrainian soldiers at the front, in hospitals, bomb shelters, schools, subways and places of temporary accommodation for internally displaced persons.
Vyacheslav Redko, a representative of the Latvian Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Ukraine, an entrepreneur and native of Donbas, saw the feasibility of using such furniture in Ukraine and initiated the cooperation of the two Baltic manufacturers.
Moreover, Belarusian workers provided free logistics for the finished products to reach Ukraine.
“I immediately met with the Latvian Finieris factory. A few weeks later, I met the Lithuanians. I wrote a letter to the factory in Latvia, and they sent a truckload of material. And the Lithuanian company did the same. That’s how the two countries got involved in cooperation with Ukraine. And then a third party came along – Belarusians living in Lithuania. They helped us a little with logistics. They brought the ready-made beds to Kyiv for free,” Redko.
The plan is to involve Estonia as well.
A memorandum between Latvia as the supplier of raw materials and Lithuania as the manufacturer was signed in Turkey. “By the way, I met them at an exhibition in Kyiv. I saw that a foreign company was present at the exhibition during the war. I started to look into what kind of products they had. Then I flew to Vilnius, flew to Riga, and put these puzzle pieces together.”
“Healthy sleep is the most important product in human life. And sleep should be of high quality, as much as possible under military conditions,” according to Redko.
In addition to the Kyiv Metro, he has delivered the beds to a school, a hospital and a number of bomb shelters.
“The Kharkiv metro is waiting. About 600 of them have already arrived,” Redo says.
The beds are given to Ukraine for free, he specifies: the Latvians are donating the materials and the Lithuanian company produces them free of charge.
“This is a completely social project. And no one should make money here. In general, I believe that today we need to help the country as much as possible, and not suck out everything possible from it,” Redko insists.
Bombings of Ukrainian cities have unveiled the poor state of its shelters.
“I want to show to Europeans that, based on our bitter experience in Ukraine, when civil defence was destroyed and bomb shelters were sold out and there was nothing there, they should stock up and have such beds,” Redko says.
The demand for the Latvian-Lithuanian convertible beds far outpaces the supply, he warns.
“We are now accepting applications, we receive requests for 100-200 pieces from each institution. But we can give them 10-20, 50 pieces at most,” he regrets.
Around 600 pieces have been delivering so far.
“I hope that we will start raising funds for the next batch now. Because neither the plywood manufacturer nor the bed manufacturer can keep producing without pay forever. I’m grateful to them for doing this,” Redko says. (LRT/Business World Magazine)
