After privatization, Dunaievetskyi Bread Products Plant modernized and retained its staff

The Dunaievetskyi Bread Products Plant, founded in the 1920s, has been operating for almost a century. Its relatively new buildings were built in the 1980s.

As its director said before the privatization, more than 30 years ago the plant was innovative and its capacity was fully utilized. But in 2021, when the SPFU began privatizing the facility, it became more of a Soviet legacy and was in a state of disrepair, with some of the premises partially destroyed. The plant needed an investor, a complete modernization, not the purchase of individual equipment or spot repairs.

In 2020, before privatization, the institution made a profit of UAH 2.2 million. At the same time, it had millions in debt. At the end of 2020, wage arrears alone reached UAH 870 thousand, and the debt to the budget was almost UAH 290 thousand. The plant's activities were costly, and it could not operate fully. For example, for several years before privatization, a powerful mill was not functioning because this area could not compete with private producers.

In the spring of 2021, LLC Epicenter K acquired the plant for UAH 227 million (with a starting price of UAH 187 million). Including VAT, the sale amounted to UAH 272.5 million.

Before the privatization, the plant's CEO Nadiia Kovbasiuk said that the ideal investor for the company would be one that had a land bank in Khmelnytskyi and was engaged in agricultural activities in the region. And so it happened. Half of Epicenter Agro's land bank (part of Epicenter K) is located in the Khmelnytskyi region. The company needs to make full use of the plant's capacities.

Before privatization, the plant's employees, especially those who had worked there for decades, were wary of the prospects of its sale. But the fears of more than 120 employees were not justified. The new owners have fully retained their jobs, as required by the terms of the contract, and are working to develop the plant. This opens up opportunities for staff expansion.

"Epicenter K is actively modernizing the acquired enterprise. Among the most notable things, the investor built a new car intake, two ferrous dryers, a building for loading grain into railcars with automatic wagon weighing, etc.

The new owners have breathed life into Dunaievetskyi Bread Products Plant, and finally one of Ukraine's largest enterprises in this area is realizing its potential.