In 2022, in a village in the Lviv region, Anastasiia Serova and her family began rebuilding their production from scratch. They were unable to take anything with them from Melitopol, as russian tanks entered the city on the very first day of the full-scale invasion. Only part of Crystal-M’s workforce, a company with thirty years of experience on the market, managed to leave the city.
In Halychyna, they rented new premises and started reassembling everything needed to produce armoured glass.
Previously, the company specialised in architectural and interior glass that adorned cities, but demand shifted during the war. Now, glass is needed primarily to protect drivers inside vehicles. The raw material remains ordinary glass, which is laminated in several layers and baked in a furnace at high temperatures of up to 800 degrees Celsius. The result is triplex glass, which does not shatter into dangerous fragments and does not cause injury.
“We managed to retain our customers from the Zaporizhzhia region, and new ones also began reaching out. These are mainly farmers for whom we produce glass for tractors and combine harvesters. There was especially strong demand for complex, curved glass for agricultural machinery,” says Anastasiia Serova, Executive Director of the company.
Producing such glass required a 3D scanner, which enables faster and more precise modelling. Because this equipment is expensive, Anastasiia applied for a grant competition organised by the Ukrainian Women’s Fund to expand her business and create jobs for women in the Khmelnytskyi and Lviv regions, within the framework of the project “Women. Peace. Security: Acting Together”, supported by the British government.
Anastasiia did not have an extensive grant history, having previously received only one grant to install heating in the workshop. Nevertheless, her application was successful, and the UWF supported her business. The 3D scanner is now already in use at the workshop, where a design engineer has begun working with it. The equipment enables the creation of a precise 3D model of the required glass, which is then used to produce a mould for bending it in the furnace. 
Currently, 18 people work in production, but there is still strong potential for growth due to high customer demand for Crystal-M’s products. Most of the employees are women, as the work in the workshop is not physically demanding. Women are employed as engineers, assemblers, procurement specialists, and operators of machinery and furnaces. Under the grant conditions, the company was required to hire three people from vulnerable groups, including women or members of military families. Employees are recruited through various platforms.
“We need qualified staff, so we are constantly searching for people. Through a support centre for military families in Lviv, we hired a person with a disability. As part of the grant, we created a position for glass grinding and hired an employee following a recommendation from the IDP Council. Through cooperation with the employment centre, we hired another woman,” Anastasiia explains.
The company fulfils orders for a furniture factory in Kalush, and farmers also place individual requests. Prior to 2022, the primary channel for attracting customers was the company’s website. Now, it is largely word of mouth, with people passing information from one to another. The company also cooperates with competitors who share customer contacts.
“In the past, we refused to produce glass for American tractors because it involved complex double-curved glass that was difficult to manufacture in our conditions. We had to turn farmers away. Now, we are beginning to work with them. There are many farmers in the Lviv region, both local and displaced from the south, and they are all potential customers,” the entrepreneur says.
The company also cooperates with car dealers across Ukraine and carefully maintains all professional contacts. The Zaporizhzhia Chamber of Commerce and Industry assisted Crystal-M in registering on a European manufacturers’ platform, through which the company recently received an order from the Czech Republic.
Anastasiia plans to resume the production of architectural glass. Her company previously glazed part of Kyiv’s Southern Railway Station and the Glass Globe on Independence Square. She dreams of once again producing glass staircases, balconies, towers, and winter gardens.
She believes this will happen in the future. For now, however, the company focuses on manufacturing safety glass and protective panels for buildings, which can help protect people from shrapnel.
