The Ukrainian Armed Forces will change the food supply system: products will be checked before delivery to units

The Ministry of Defence of Ukraine and the Defence Procurement Agency (DOT) are starting to scale up a new food supply system for service members. Products will be inspected even before being delivered to military units, and the procurement of food and its logistics will be split among different companies.

Under the new model, products for the Ukrainian Armed Forces should be supplied by pre-qualified manufacturers, while professional logistics operators will handle the delivery. The Ministry of Defence expects that this separation of functions will increase competition among suppliers and make pricing more transparent.

Quality control will also change. Plans are to inspect products at distribution centres before they are sent directly to military units. In this way, substandard batches should be identified at an intermediate supply stage.

The Ministry of Defence and DOT previously tested a similar model in Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast. Under the pilot project, manufacturers delivered products via distribution centres, and a separate logistics operator handled distribution. According to the Ministry of Defence, in the first half of 2025, 164 manufacturers were qualified under this model, and distribution centres received an average of about 500 tonnes of products per week.

The next stage of the reform should be a shift from ordering individual products to ordering specific meals through the DOT-Chain Food digital system. It will automatically calculate the required quantity of ingredients, taking into account the meal recipe and the number of personnel.

DOT-Chain is already used for digitising the Army’s food supply. According to the Ministry of Defence, the introduction of the system has reduced the food supply cycle by approximately fourfold and automated a significant part of the documentation that was previously done manually.

The Ministry of Defence plans to carry out the first procurements under the expanded model as early as 2026. The reform will initially cover military units in several regions, after which it is intended to be gradually extended to other units.

Based on materials from: Ministry of Defence of Ukraine