INNOVATIVE ACTIVITY OF DAIRY ENTERPRISES OF UKRAINE

Background. The dairy industry plays an important role in ensuring the country’s food security, and the consumption of quality dairy products by the population in the required quantity and at reasonable prices is an urgent condition for ensuring the health of the nation. That’s why the study of the main trends and prospects for the development of the dairy market in Ukraine is relevant and important, especially in an unsaturated market. The analysis of recent research and publications hasrevealed the need of studying the innovative aspect of the development of the dairy industry and deter­mi­ning the prerequisites for the innovative activity of dairy enterprises to ensure their competitiveness on the market. The aimof the study is to analyzethe development of the dairy industry in Ukraine in general and in the context of its innovative activities in particular.The tasks of the study were to identify trends, highlight the problems of innovative activities of dairy industry enterprises to ensure successful long-term work on the market and determine the directions for their solution. Materials and methods. In the process of the study, we used statistical methods of analysis, which made it possible to determine the dynamics of the main indicators of the development of the dairy industry and its main structural characteristics. We also used dialectical, abstract-logical and systemic analysis, which made it possible to determine the main positive and negative trends in the development of the dairy industry and, in par­ticular, its innovative activities. Results. In Ukraine, the dairy industry is developing unevenly. The article examines the indicators of the development of the dairy raw material market, the amount of production and consumption of milk per person in Ukraine, the structure of the market of dairy producers, the volume of dairy products production, the volume of innovative products sold by the dairy companies, the number of food and dairy enterprises, that were engaged in innovative activities and introduced innovations according to their types, the number of units of new products that were introduced in the food and dairy industry, the structure of new products introduced in the food and dairy industry, the number of introduced products per enterprise, the amount of innovation expenditures, and the cost efficiency ratio. This made it possible to identify the main trends and problems in the development of the dairy industry and determine the main directions of their solution. Conclusion. The main reasons that hinder the development of the dairy industry in Ukraine and have a negative effect on dairy producers are: lack of raw materials; price fluctuations for raw materials and finished products; law quality of raw materials, un­stable socio-economic situation of the country, decline in the purchasing power of the population, loss of some international sales markets; decrease in market capacity due to the loss of control over the part of the territory of Ukraine. At the same time, the deve­lopment of technical and technological basis doesn’t allow manufacturers and processors to reduce prices and stimulate demand; the links between producers and processors aren’t optimized in terms of delivery charges; low world prices for dairy products reduce the export potential of domestic dairy products. Therefore, there is a need for significant adap­tation of dairy producers to export requirements.