Investors in Kaliningrad are smeared with oil – Newspaper Kommersant No. 225 (7426) dated 05.12.2022
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Former LUKOIL top manager and active real estate investor Alexander Rappoport may get a new project in the food industry. Structures related to him have bought out the debts of the once large supplier of fat and oil products of the Soyuz corporation and can receive its assets in Kaliningrad. To develop in an already divided market, it will be necessary to find new niches, experts say.
Soyuz-22 LLC, associated with businessman Alexander Rappoport, agreed to purchase Soyuz-TTM LLC, a subsidiary of Soyuz Corporation, once a major supplier of oil and fat products. This follows from the announcement in the bankruptcy register dated December 1.
Soyuz-TTM operates a vegetable oil transshipment terminal in Kaliningrad, facilities for processing oils, producing fats for the food industry, and a coffee plant. The capacity of the complex is 250 thousand tons of products per year, according to the Soyuz website. The cost of 100% of Soyuz-TTM is 299 million rubles. In July 2022, Soyuz-22 leased the property of Soyuz-TTM. Also, Soyuz-22 is one of the residents of the Kaliningrad SEZ with a project to create a complex for the production of innovative types of food products at Soyuz-TTM.
Soyuz Corporation was founded in 2000 in St. Petersburg, and in 2003 it began building enterprises in Kaliningrad. In 2013, a corporate conflict began between the co-owners of the Soyuz, Sergei Vasilyev, Andrei Baranov and Yuri Borodavko, which could have a negative impact on business, the Vedomosti newspaper reported. And in 2021, bankruptcy proceedings began in the Soyuz structures. One of the main creditors of the corporation with a debt of more than 2 billion rubles. was Sberbank.
As stated in the message on the conclusion of the agreement, the owner of 0.1% of Soyuz-22, Andrey Pinchuk, is the father-in-law of Alexander Rappoport, the owner of Revard Invest LLC, which acts as a creditor to Soyuz structures. According to a Kommersant source in the market, Mr. Rappoport’s structures bought out Soyuz’s debts, and now, apparently, they are completing a deal to register assets as property. Sberbank has already assigned the debt, another Kommersant source says. The bank itself did not provide a comment. Soyuz-22 and Alexander Rappoport’s Street Development company did not answer Kommersant’s questions.
On December 15, at the request of Revard Invest, a meeting of creditors of Soyuz-TTM was scheduled, where the issue of concluding a settlement agreement is on the table, follows from the register of bankruptcy information. Valeria Tikhonova, senior lawyer for Vegas Lex bankruptcy projects, says that there are examples when in such cases only the claims of external creditors, if any, are repaid, and the debts of persons associated with the new owners may not be paid at all.
The Vedomosti newspaper calls Alexander Rappoport a former top manager of LUKOIL. The businessman is primarily known as an active real estate investor. The sources of the newspaper also called Mr. Rappoport the main owner of the Zerno-trade company, one of the largest grain exporters from the Russian Federation. According to Kommersant’s sources, the businessman can restart the Soyuz assets in order to resell them to a strategic investor later.
Director of Sovecon Andrey Sizov says that a potential investor may be attracted in general by the food or agricultural sectors, which continue to grow against the backdrop of a shrinking Russian economy. But, he points out, it will be difficult to find a use for the corporation’s assets today. The domestic market of specialty fats is occupied primarily by the Efko Group, and in the Kaliningrad region, the Sodruzhestvo Group dominates the oil and fat market, the expert points out.
Mikhail Maltsev, executive director of the Oil and Fat Union, says that the business of the Union was, in fact, reduced to importing processed palm oil from Europe for the production of fats by mixing and packaging in Kaliningrad. Given the current geopolitical situation, this model does not seem to work, he said. According to Andrei Sizov, the Soyuz may be able to find some niche, but it will not be easy to do so.
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