The State Property Fund of Ukraine (SPFU) has put up for privatization the Shabalynivka distillery in Chernihiv region.
“This facility is a promising brownfield waiting for an investor to restore it. The privatization of the plant opens up opportunities for the development of an industrial site with existing infrastructure,” said Vitaliy Koval, head of the SPF, on Telegram.
According to the report, the plant is located in the village of Ivanivka, Nizhyn district, near the lake and the M-02 and T-2523 highways.
The single property complex includes 51 real estate objects (12,312 thousand square meters), two land plots with an area of 56.46 hectares, three cars and 250 movable property items (equipment, furniture, etc.).
The new owner is obliged to pay off the company’s existing wage arrears of UAH 552 thousand and UAH 21.17 million to the budget. The terms of the sale include the preservation of jobs for six months.
The starting price of the lot is UAH 959.1 thousand (excluding VAT).
The online auction will take place on May 16 in the Prozorro.Sale system. Bids will be accepted until May 15 inclusive.
“The privatization of Shabalynivka Distillery is a chance for investors to realize their business ideas on the basis of existing production facilities and infrastructure. The new owner will be able to diversify its activities and create added value,” said the SPF chairman.
According to the Fund, distilleries are one of the most popular small-scale privatization assets. Since September 2022, the SPF has sold 14 distilleries and raised UAH 965 million to the state budget, with the average price of each object at auction tripling.
The SPF planned to fully complete the privatization of the alcohol industry in 2023, for which it was planned to hold online auctions for the sale of 26 distilleries across the country. However, a number of them did not take place.
State-owned enterprise Guaranteed Buyer has paid UAH 4.3 billion to renewable electricity producers for the purchased resource in several months of 2023 after the National Energy and Utilities Regulatory Commission (NEURC) approved the amount of compensation from NPC Ukrenergo by Resolution No. 858 of April 30.
“On May 6, the company made payments totaling UAH 4.3 billion and achieved the following payment levels: for January 2023 – 100%, for February – 94.9%, for July – 99.4%, for August – 100%, for September – 96.8%,” GarPok’s website reports.
They explained that the payment was made at the expense of funds received from Ukrenergo, as well as payments from renewable energy producers for services to settle the share of imbalances and the cost of deviations of the balancing group of Guaranteed Buyer.
According to the website, in April, Guaranteed Buyer transferred UAH 2.8 billion to renewable energy producers at the feed-in tariff, both for April last year and for April this year.
As reported, in early April, in a commentary to Energoreforma, Ukrenergo CEO Volodymyr Kudrytskyi predicted that industrial RES plants would start repaying their debts in the near future.
“As for the payment for electricity produced through Guaranteed Buyer, the debts a month ago were UAH 32 billion, now they are at the level of UAH 22-23 billion and will decrease significantly after we sign the acts with Guaranteed Buyer for 2022-2023. I hope that we are very close to signing the agreements, as there is still a technical problem. Then, I think, we will be able to pay several billion hryvnias,” Kudrytsky said.
Ukraine’s largest one dollar store chain, Aurora, will become the first tenant of M10 Lviv Industrial Park (347 Shevchenko St.), the press service of Lviv City Council reports.
As reported, in February 2024, the developer of the industrial park, Dragon Capital, commissioned the first phase of M10 Lviv Industrial Park, a Class A warehouse complex with an area of 14.4 thousand square meters.
The further development of the M10 Industrial Park project envisages the construction of warehouse complexes in the build-to-suit format (design and construction of a facility for a customer).
“We are currently negotiating with several potential participants. These are representatives of Ukrainian business, manufacturing companies looking to expand or relocate their business. As for the format of cooperation (sale or lease), it depends on the needs and situation of a particular company,” Mykhailo Sakun, Dragon Capital’s investment director, told Interfax-Ukraine.
M10 Lviv Industrial Park is a new industrial park located in the Ryasne-2 industrial zone of Lviv, on the M10 highway, 60 km from the Krakovets checkpoint on the border with Poland. The territory of the park covers an area of 23.5 hectares and consists of six plots planned for warehousing and production facilities with a total area of 140 thousand square meters. Dragon Capital Property Management, the company’s own management company, provides centralized maintenance of infrastructure facilities and security for the park. The facilities are certified according to BREEAM international green building standards.
In 2023, the European Bank for Development and Reconstruction (EBRD) has already invested $5.5 million in the project, and its total investment in M10 Lviv Industrial Park will be up to $24.5 million. The World Bank’s International Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) has also insured the project against military risks for 10 years for an investment of $9.2 million.
The head office of the Aurora retail chain is located in Poltava. “Aurora was founded in 2011 by Lev Zhydenko, Taras Panasenko, and Lesia Klymenko.
According to Opendatabot, the owner of Vygidna Kupilka LLC, which develops the chain, is listed as Cyprus-based Auroritel Investments Limited, with Zhydenko as its beneficiary. The Cypriot company also owns Prior Development LLC, Seven A LLC, Promyslova 9 LLC, and Tak LLC.
Dragon Capital is one of the largest groups of companies in Ukraine operating in the field of investment and financial services and providing a full range of investment banking and brokerage services, private equity, asset management to institutional, corporate and private clients. The company has more than 20 years of successful experience in direct investments in leading manufacturers of goods and service providers in Ukraine, as well as in landmark residential and commercial real estate projects.
Dragon Capital Property Management is the management team that manages the company’s commercial real estate portfolio. It manages 28 properties (business centers, shopping malls and logistics centers) with a total area of 647 thousand square meters.
In 2023, AgroGeneration Group produced about 72.45 thsd tonnes of grains and oilseeds, which is 8.6% less than a year earlier, with an increase in acreage by 2.5% to 29.62 thsd ha, the company’s website reports.
It is noted that the EBITDA of the agricultural holding in 2023 returned to positive values, amounting to EUR 0.3 mln, compared to negative EUR 5.8 mln in 2022. The company was still well below the pre-war level, although net losses decreased from EUR31.6 million in 2022 to EUR7.9 million in 2023, the report said.
AgroGeneration explained the decline in production by almost 9% by the forced changes in the range of crops in 2023 due to the reduction of winter wheat plantings in the fall of 2022. This, in turn, was caused by weather conditions and resulted in more than 70% of the sown areas becoming less productive after several years of sunflower cultivation.
According to the report, crop yields in 2023 increased by 30% compared to the previous year and amounted to about 4 tons/ha versus 3 tons/ha, respectively. Despite the increase in the harvest, the quality of wheat decreased and almost 100% of it was represented by feed grain, while a year earlier this figure was 80%. The agroholding explains that wheat quality deteriorated across Ukraine due to heavy rains before the harvesting campaign in June-July 2023 and due to the late sowing campaign in the fall of 2022 amid poor weather conditions.
The group’s farms harvested about 43 thsd tonnes of sunflower at an average net yield of 1.9 c/ha, compared to 2 c/ha in 2022. The total net production of corn and soybeans amounted to about 6 thousand tons.
AgroGeneration’s revenue in 2023 amounted to EUR16.4 million, down 36.7% year-on-year, due to the sale of 75.7 thousand tons (-7.4 thousand tons by 2022) of crops from the 2022 and 2023 harvests, which were sold at significantly reduced prices. At the same time, EUR 9.3 mln was received from the sale of 2022 stocks, EUR 7.4 mln for the 2023 harvest, and EUR 0.2 mln was received for other products and services.
The share of exports in AgroGeneration’s revenue in 2023 amounted to 18% in tonnage, compared to 28% in 2022.
AgroGeneration was founded in 2007. The company specializes in growing grains and oilseeds, and its land bank before the Russian military invasion amounted to 58 thousand hectares in Kharkiv region, and by the end of 2022 it had shrunk to 30 thousand hectares due to the Russian invasion. Following the operational restructuring carried out in the third quarter of last year due to the war, the holding includes seven companies. The restructuring was aimed at disposing of “toxic” assets, including 25,000 hectares of land destroyed or severely damaged by the war and located near the Russian border, which would have cost more than $50 million to maintain.
Due to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, AgroGeneration reduced its land bank to 30 thousand hectares from 56 thousand hectares in 2022. The agricultural holding’s revenue fell by 41.1% compared to the pre-war year 2021 to EUR 25.854 million, and net loss amounted to EUR 31.595 million against net profit of EUR 14.202 million, respectively. The gross loss amounted to EUR5.608 million against a gross profit of EUR32.361 million in 2021, and the losses from the war were estimated at EUR15.448 million.
At the end of last year, the company’s total debt was estimated at EUR18.065 million, down from EUR24.599 million a year earlier, and its assets were EUR36.391 million, compared to EUR82.033 million a year earlier.
Currently, the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine is considering the purchase of shares of AgroGeneration S. A. by NovaAgro Ukraine LLC, which will make it the owner of AgroGeneration S. A., which would make it the owner of a controlling stake.
Oil prices continue to rise on Tuesday morning as traders assess the situation in the Middle East.
The cost of July futures for Brent on the London ICE Futures exchange as of 8:04 a.m. is $83.48 per barrel, which is $0.15 (0.18%) higher than at the close of the previous trading. On Monday, these contracts rose by $0.37 (0.5%) to $83.33 per barrel.
June futures for WTI in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) have risen in price by this time by $0.14 (0.18%) to $78.62 per barrel. As a result of the previous trading, the value of these contracts increased for the first time in six sessions – by $0.37 (0.5%) to $78.48 per barrel.
Israel is not abandoning its plans to conduct an operation in Rafah, intending to put pressure on the Hamas movement in this way, The Times of Israel reports, citing a statement by the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The Israeli military cabinet unanimously voted to continue preparations for an operation in Rafah in order to put military pressure on Hamas to make progress in releasing hostages and achieving the war’s goals,” the newspaper quoted the statement of the office as saying.
According to it, Hamas’s recent response to peace initiatives does not satisfy Israel. Netanyahu had earlier said that Hamas had put forward unacceptable demands, including a permanent ceasefire.
In addition, Saudi Aramco announced last weekend that it will raise oil prices for Asian buyers in June. The cost of the main grade supplied to Asia, Arab Light, will increase by $0.9 per barrel. As a result, it will cost $2.9 more than the basket of Omani and Dubai crude, Saudi Aramco said in a statement.
The price increase may indicate that Saudi Arabia is “not that worried about weak oil demand,” MartketWatch quotes Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at The Price Futures Group, as saying.
