Other assets, such as chemical plants, have drawn the interest of local energy companies, market sources say. The petrochemical industry has attracted the attention of the companies in this business because of the low oil price. This means major companies in Romania like MOL announced they planned to strengthen their petrochemical operations while Petrom expressed interest in niche petrochemical products.
The sale of assets comes amid the hardships Interagro is facing, as many of the companies in the group have gone insolvent. Interagro SA and Interagro SRL, the crown jewels of Niculae’s empire, were two of the biggest insolvencies of last year. The two posted 650 million lei (EUR150 million) revenue and had RON2.5 billion total debt in 2015, according to the latest publicly available data. The revenue of the two stood at RON3.3 billion in 2014.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)