Sovfracht not in talks to buy Mariysky Oil Refinery
MOSCOW. Nov 8 (Interfax) - The owners of LLC Mariysky Oil Refinery are continuing to look for a buyer for the refinery, a source at the company told Interfax.
There have been media reports that negotiations on the sale of the refinery are being held with shipper Sovfracht.
However, Sovfracht chief executive Dmitry Purim told Interfax that the company has not made an offer to buy Mariysky Oil Refinery and has not received a proposal on its sale.
"To say that a deal to acquire the refinery is close to completion is not correct," Purim said, adding that the "Sovfracht-Sovmortrans Group is after all primarily focused on the transport business."
He said Sovfracht is a major transport client of the refinery, one of its creditors and is interested in its development.
Mariysky Oil Refinery, located 45 km northeast of Ioshkar-Ola in the Marii El Republic, was launched in 1998 and now has capacity to refine 1.25 million tonnes of oil per year. The refinery's main products are straight-run gasoline, diesel fuel and marine fuel. The refinery has previously said it plans to triple capacity.
Cyprus-based Barossa Limited owns 99.33% of shares in the refinery and its board chairman Alexei Mileyev holds the other 0.67%, according to the SPARK-Interfax database.
The Marii El administration said in September that the company plans to raise 60 billion rubles from Vnesheconombank (VEB) for its expansion. The refinery received a loan of 1.6 billion rubles from VTB in May 2011. At the time, the refinery's total debt to the bank already amounted to 6.995 billion rubles.
Sovfracht-Sovmortrans Group, the flagship company of which is JSC Sovfracht, is a major Russian freight forwarding company that provides marine, railway and automobile shipping services. The group owns two port stevedoring divisions (Astrakhan Commercial Sea Port and Ferrum+, which operates the ore terminal at the Ilyichevsk Commercial Sea Port in Ukraine) and five container terminals in St. Petersburg, Ilyichevsk and Odessa, and operates leased warehouses and terminals for holding cars.
The group is controlled by Dmitry Purim and Sovfracht chairman Alexander Ivanov.