The State Property Fund of Ukraine (SPFU) announced plans earlier this week to privatize the Mykolayiv Alumina Plant and several other assets owned by Russian nationals later this year.
In an interview with Forbes, SPFU head Rustem Umerov said that the plant, which was once owned by former Rusal president Oleg Deripaska, will not be available for two to three months, as that is the typical turn-around time to prepare an asset for privatization.
Umerov noted that the move has a great deal of precedence before it.
“The SPF has already handed over the assets of fugitive president Viktor Yanukovych and Russian businessman Vladimir Yevtushenkov, as well as Demurinsky GZK, which belonged to Russian businessman Mikhail Shelkov. We are preparing to put Demurinsky GZK up for privatization. As for other assets, we are still working on taking them into management.”
Umerov went on to elaborate upon the process for bringing the plant to sale as a private asset.
“The Mykolaiv Alumina Plant has not yet been legally managed by the SPF. As soon as we get it under management, we plan to quickly put it up for auction. In general, it will take 60-90 days to prepare the facility for privatization. The privatization of the plant will actually begin in the second or third quarter of this year. From the moment of the announcement of the auction, the fund will operate in the same way as it did at the Demurinsky GZK. UAH 40 million was needed to start the enterprise there. We looked at the available assets and decided to put the products that were preserved at the GZK on Prozorro. And for these funds launched the enterprise and paid salaries.”
Umerov went on to say that the SPFU wishes to auction off the plant as soon as it can, but it must first carry out a substantial legal, technical, and financial audit before that happens.
The Mykolaiv Alumina Plant utilizes the Bayer process to produce aluminium hydroxide at a nameplate capacity of 1.8 million metric tons per year. The refinery was Rusal’s second-largest alumina asset, and accounted for one-fifth of the company’s total yearly output of alumina.
