JSC First Kyiv Machine-Building Plant (the former Bilshovyk plant) will be put up for a privatization auction with a starting price of UAH 1.39 billion, which was approved by the Cabinet of Ministers on Wednesday, Dmytro Sennychenko, head of the State Property Fund (SPF) of Ukraine, said. “Today, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has accepted the terms of its privatization. As they say, now a small [not so] challenge remains to find, together with a representative of Big-4, KPMG Ukraine, investors for this asset,” he said on Facebook on Wednesday evening.
According to Sennychenko, the commission will determine the date of the auction in the near future.
“The experience of previous competitions held by the SPF allows us to confidently predict that we will see a significantly larger number on the final scoreboard,” the SPF head said.
He recalled that the plant was established in 1881, when a Swiss entrepreneur bought about 4.4 hectares of land on Shuliavka in Kyiv, and six months later a new enterprise appeared here – Kyiv iron cast and mechanical plant.
“Over the next more than a hundred years, the plant changed the scale of production, profile, name, and experienced stunning transformations – from an unconditional flagship of the industry to an abandoned technically obsolete site,” Sennychenko wrote, adding that perhaps the enterprise will again interest some Swiss investor.
As reported, in accordance with the privatization conditions approved by the Cabinet of Ministers, the new owner of the enterprise must fulfill a number of social and economic conditions, in particular, the payment of wage arrears and single social security tax, the implementation of the current collective agreement and the prevention of dismissal within a certain period.