12 February 2025, Wednesday, 7:08
Support
the website
Sim Sim,
Charter 97!
Categories

Miory Plant, Taken Away From Private Owners By Lukashists: How Does It Work Today?

2
Miory Plant, Taken Away From Private Owners By Lukashists: How Does It Work Today?

It is lagging far behind the original plans.

The Miory Metal Rolling Plant, which the authorities previously took away from private owners on Lukashenka's initiative, mainly sells its products to Russia. At the same time, the enterprise is noticeably lagging behind the original plans, writes Zerkalo.

The Miory Metal Rolling Plant makes tinplate, which is used to produce cans, lids, wire, aerosol cans and various containers, such as for paint.

In 2024, this plant produced 72 thousand tons of products. Of these, only a fifth was sold on the domestic market, the rest went to other countries. 80% of exports are oriented to Russia.

“We ship 20% of our products to Belarusian consumers (Rahachou and Hlybokaye dairy and canning plants, Magol, Unibox and other enterprises), covering a large part of the domestic market in our niche,” said Siarhei Isayeu, General Director of the Metal Rolling Company.

Among other countries where the company supplies tinplate, he named Armenia, Kazakhstan, Egypt and Turkey, and they have also started selling it to Uzbekistan. They are planning to start selling to Pakistan.

This year, the plant wants to increase production to 85 thousand tons. These are more modest plans than the management announced a year ago. Then it was stated that in 2025 they would produce 120 thousand tons of tinplate. And when the enterprise was just “ripped” from businessmen on Lukashenka’s initiative, the plans were to produce 150 thousand tons per year.

The story of the nationalization of a private plant

Businessman Aliaksei Kavalionak and his partners launched the Miory Metal Rolling Plant in 2020. Investments amounted to 200 million euros. In the same year, MMPZ-Group signed a sponsorship contract with one of the leading Formula 1 racing teams, McLaren.

In June 2021, shortly before Lukashenka's visit to the plant in Miory, security forces detained its managers. After that, officials began to “save” the enterprise. As a result, in 2022, all assets and debts of the Miory Metal Rolling Plant were transferred to a new state-owned company, founded by Beltsvetmet. In August of the same year, Lukashenka announced the nationalization of the plant “due to the fact that private owners failed to fulfill their obligations”, then the politician was outraged that “an ideal enterprise was turned into a bankrupt one.”

In November 2022, the plant in Miory was transferred to the newly created state-owned enterprise — Metal Rolling Company, which operates under the Tinergy brand. It is subordinate to Beltsvetmet. The company's management assures that the plant is operating successfully in state hands, with “confidence in the future.”

However, by decision of the Council of Ministers, the company does not publish financial statements.

As for Belarusbank, it participated in financing the acquisition of the main technological equipment. In 2015, the company took out a loan to finance the supply of technological equipment from Germany.

“Loan agreements were concluded for a total of 106.2 million euros using the resources of the German bank AKA Ausfuhrkredit-Gesellschaft mbH”, the bank's press service reported. For this, Belarusbank attracted resources from German banks. The plant specified that the loans were taken for 10 years “at an unprecedentedly low interest rate” and without the involvement of guarantees from the Belarusian government. At auction, they repeatedly tried to sell the property of MMPZ-group for almost 1.5 million rubles. The last time was on November 3, 2023.

However, the auction did not take place, since there were no willing buyers of the property, according to data from the Unified State Register of Bankruptcy Information. In mid-January 2024, the Economic Court of the Vitsebsk Region completed the liquidation proceedings of the company MMPZ-group. This means that the company, declared bankrupt, is closed.

Write your comment 2

Follow Charter97.org social media accounts