Ukraine announces sale of Odesa Port-Side Plant
The State Property Fund (SPF) of Ukraine announced the sale of 99.5667% of JSC Odesa Port-Side Plant (Pivdenne, Odesa region) at an online auction in the ProZorro.Sale system on November 25, 2025 with a starting price of UAH 4.5 billion.
According to the announcement on the Fund's website, offers to participate in the auction will be accepted until 24:00 on November 24. The amount of the guarantee deposit is UAH 224.43 million.
The facility includes 45 real estate and infrastructure units, such as a greenhouse and vegetable complex, a medical and health center, the Karpatski zori boarding house in Yaremche, and a training and sports water and rowing base. The total area of the property is 285,400 square meters, and the total area of the 32 registered land plots is 262.9 hectares. Of this, 252.4 hectares are under the right of permanent use.
As of June 30, 2025, the enterprise employed 1,436 people.
According to the report, Odesa Port-Side Plant revenue from January to June of this year was UAH 322.63 million, while its net loss was UAH 280.79 million. The plant increased its revenue from UAH 494.57 million a year earlier to UAH 944.22 million in 2024, but its net loss increased from UAH 1.09 billion to UAH 1.8 billion.
As of midyear, the plant's salary debt was UAH 184.39 million, its budget debt was UAH 182.44 million, and its overdue accounts payable were UAH 16.62 billion.
The auction winner is required to maintain primary operations for five years, invest at least UAH 500 million, repay salary and budget debts within a year, gradually repay overdue debts, and ensure compliance with environmental legislation and provide employee guarantees.
In an August interview with NV Business, Yuriy Kovalsky, the Acting Chairman of the Board and Director of Odesa Port-Side Plant, reported that in August 2024, the plant's management attempted to launch one of the two ammonia units. However, this attempt was unsuccessful. Since then, Odesa Port-Side Plant has reorganized to transship grain, and this activity has been the enterprise's only source of income. However, at the end of June, the warehouses suffered significant damage as a result of a Russian air attack, which suspended transshipment operations. According to Kovalsky, Odesa Port-Side Plant's grain transshipment partner is the trader, V AGRO LLC. During the 2024–2025 marketing year, approximately 638,000 tonnes of grain were transshipped, including 625,000 tonnes of corn and 12,700 tonnes of soybeans.
The acting chairman of the board reported that Odesa Port-Side Plant has significantly reduced costs, sold non-core assets, and is working with creditors, particularly NJSC Naftogaz Ukrainy, to offer a viable debt structure to future investors. This amounts to approximately UAH 2.5 billion.
Kovalsky noted that, for security reasons, Odesa Port-Side Plant does not plan to resume production in the near future. However, the company maintains its production lines in full technical readiness to resume work as soon as possible. He estimated that launching the plant would cost approximately 30 million cubic meters of gas.
In addition to the state's stake, 0.0021% belonged to Concord Capital LLC and 0.4312% to other individual shareholders.
The state has tried several times to privatize the enterprise, but without success.
In 2009, the company Nortima, controlled by Ihor Kolomoisky, the former owner of PrivatBank, won the tender for the sale of the state-owned enterprise for UAH 5 billion. However, the tender commission refused to recognize Nortima as the winner due to the low bid price and suspicion of collusion among the participants. The commission declared that the tender had not taken place.
Then, in 2016, Ukraine put 99.567% of Odesa Port-Side Plant shares up for sale twice: first in July at a starting price of UAH 13.175 billion and then in December at a reduced price of UAH 5.16 billion. Both attempts were unsuccessful. The lack of interest in Odesa Port-Side Plant was due to its over $250 million debt to Dmytro Firtash’s entities, which was confirmed by the Stockholm Arbitration.
In late July 2018, the State Property Fund of Ukraine selected a consortium led by Pericles Global Advisory and consisting of White & Case LLP, Kinstellar, KPMG Ukraine, and SARS Capital as the investment advisor for Odesa Port-Side Plant's privatization. Before the Coronavirus pandemic, it was assumed that the company could be put up for sale as early as August 2020. However, the Fund postponed these plans to 2021 and ultimately did not implement them. In the years leading up to the war, the enterprise intermittently produced fertilizer under a toll scheme.
