Another attempt to sell Vratsa-based plant Chimco failed. On March 19, at the request of Iveta Tomova, trustee of the bankrupt company, the assets (or at least what has left of them) were put at tender after the decision of the District Court in Vratsa. However, no candidates turned up. The dream of Economy Minister Dragomir Stoynev for reindustrialization of the economy in which Chimco had a fundamental role, once again was postponed for a better period in the future.
The starting price for the remains of the plant was fixed at 28,552,458 million levs, excluding VAT. According to the trustee this is the viable current assessment of the plant at this time. Slated for sale were lands, buildings, engineering and main production facilities, equipment, assets and vehicles. All this had to be sold en masse, although the evaluation gave the separate value of all movable or immovable property items – from buildings to the desks and chairs in them.
Let us note that a long time ago Minister Stoynev announced that for a buyer will be selected the investor who proves to be able to deliver gas at a preferential price. Come to think of it, companies with such a profile are not that many.
Although for a long time it has been rumoured that there was a request by an investor who supposedly was going to heal the plant and who was on his way even to ensure delivery of cheap natural gas for the production of urea, until the present moment this player has remained unnamed. Otherwise, preliminary analyzes were made and they indicated that the work of the plant can be recovered up to about a quarter of its previous capacity; which means 170 tonnes of urea and 105 thousand tonnes of ammonia per year. Apart from these calculations, however, the experts did not see justification for what proportion of the old assets can actually be used. According to the report prepared two years ago by a team of Kiril Petkov, a former director of the plant (before privatization), the analysis of possibilities for resuming work in the Vratsa plant showed it can work with about a quarter of its capacity. As the BANKER weekly wrote then, the experts were actually talking about the so-called Seventh production line installed in 1983 that according to analysts had the resources to work for another 15 years.
It turns out, however that only illusions are for free, as it became clear on March 19. At the same time, just days before the auction date, Elin Topalov, the long ago forgotten trustee of the company New Chimco, decided to play a new legal trick. He asked for guarantees against future property claims against Chimco and thus actually tried to hinder the auction. Judge Radoslava Simeonova of the Vratsa District Court allowed the issuance of guarantee against claims, provided that the candidates lodged a collateral of 285 000 levs, which is 10 percent of the value of assets put up for sale and has suspended the auction until claim are made. Until the last moment no deposit has been made and it is a fact that the law entitles New Chimco to claim for ownership because the contract under which the company has acquired the fertilizing plant has still not been terminated.
At the same time it is a fact that the current valuation of the company is five times lower than what was determined by Vratsa court in the reorganization procedure when the company New Chimco, connected to businessman Nikolay Galchev, took over the plant from its previous owner, the shareholding company Chimco.
Moreover, this estimate dramatically diverges from the declared value of the assets in the last financial report (from three years ago) that people of Mr. Galchev have entered into the commercial register – and it is 149 million levs.
For some reason no one asks where these more than 100 million levs melted, provided that the obligations to major creditors – Bulgargas and the National Electricity Company are still unsettled.
The BANKER
