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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
The State Property Fund ties this to the elections in the United States.
The privatization auction to sell the Odessa Port Plant, scheduled for 19 October with a starting price of over 4,3 billion UAH, did not take place due to a lack of buyers.
This is indicated by information on the ProZorro.Sale website.
Applications could be submitted until 20:00 Sunday.
“Well, miracles, unfortunately, did not happen, and the daily, tedious, painstaking work also seems to be powerless against banal political conjuncture. The multi-year corruption saga again remains without a happy ending,” commented the head of the State Property Fund, Dmytro Natalukha.
He added that they should wait until 3 November" (the date of the U.S. midterm elections).
“This is the phrase I have heard most often over the last 2-3 days from American companies that previously sent letters in which they “guarantee participation in the auction and to bid at the starting price,” Natalukha explained.
Odessa Port Plant is Ukraine’s largest chemical enterprise and is on the list of large privatization enterprises. Since August 2019, it has operated under a tolling arrangement, with gas supplied by LLC Agro Gas Trading.
In July 2021, the supplier of tolling raw materials for the OPZ was chosen as Singapore-based Dachex Shipping Pte. Ltd, but AGT blocked signing the contract with this company in court. The main raw material for the plant is natural gas, whose price has risen. In September 2021, the OPZ decided to halt production due to unprofitability.
In July 2026, the government approved the privatization terms for the OPZ.
The state tried several times to privatize the OPZ, but to no avail. In 2009, the winner of the sale was the company “Nortima,” controlled by former owner PrivatBank’s owner Ihor Kolomoyskyi, for 5 billion UAH. However, the auction commission refused to recognize the company as the winner due to what it saw as too low a price and suspicions of collusion, declaring the auction unsuccessful. Then in 2016, Ukraine twice put 99,567% of OPZ shares up for sale: first in July at a starting price of 13,175 billion UAH, then in December at a reduced price of 5,16 billion UAH, but both times without results.
Lack of interest in the OPZ, in particular, was linked to its debt of over $250 million to structures of Dmitry Firtash, confirmed by the Stockholm Arbitration. In November last year, the State Property Fund again tried to privatize the OPZ for 4 billion 488,5 million UAH, but bids for purchase were also absent.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Аукціон з продажу Одеського припортового заводу знову скасували через відсутність покупців". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: LB.ua.
