TIRANA, Feb. 10 – A Tirana-based private bailiff has announced the sale of several key assets by ARMO oil refiner whose minority 15 percent stake is still held by the Albanian government following its failed privatization back in 2008.
In an announcement published on local media this week, the EPSA private bailiff invites bids for the sale of 26 ARMO assets in its Fier refinery, southwestern Albania, at a starting price of 2.8 billion lek (about €20 million) on behalf of Raiffeisen Bank, the country’s biggest lender, following the refiner’s default on its loan.
The 26 assets include large areas of land, several oil tanks and technological lines which are scheduled for sale in an auction scheduled for Feb. 19.
The company’s auction comes more than two years after an Azerbaijani-based company took over the majority 80 percent stake in ARMO and the company’s continued accumulation of debts to creditors and the government in unpaid taxes. ARMO workers have often staged protests over unpaid wages and job cuts.
Back in 2013, Azerbaijani-based Heaney Assets Corporation took over 80 percent of ARMO shares from Albanian businessman Rezart Taà§i for an undisclosed amount, committing to pay off the company’s huge debts.
The refiner was privatized in 2008 when a consortium led-by Taà§i’s Anika Enterprises bought an 85 percent stake in ARMO oil refiner for €128 million. The deal was reportedly financed by the Azerbaijani state bank with 75 million Euros. In 2013, just before the company switched hands, the bank sued Taà§i for failing to pay, demanding the seizure of ARMO’s assets.
ARMO’s assets include two refineries in Ballsh and Fier and one thermal power plant, built in the 1970s under communism. With 1,500 employees throughout Albania, ARMO operates two refineries with a refining capacity of 1.5 million tons per year, three wholesale branches, a research facility, and an import/export terminal. The total storage capacity is 220,000 cubic meters.
In its new privatization plans, the Albanian government intends to sell its remaining 14.9 percent minority stake in ARMO for 22 million euros by 2017.
Having accumulated huge amounts of debts and with international oil prices at a record low, the sale of ARMO assets in the coming auction scheduled for Feb. 19 is little likely to succeed.
Back in March 2015, a similar auction to sell one of the country’s biggest commercial centres at a starting bid of 24.8 million euros failed to attract interest.
City Park, the second modern shopping center outside Tirana located in the Tirana-Durres highway opened its doors in 2009 but the crisis Albania has been facing in the past few years and fierce competition from the opening of a new larger shopping center later in 2011 led the company which built the commercial center and managed it into bankruptcy. The investors had borrowed from Tirana Bank, a subsidiary of the Greece-based Piraeus Bank Group, which now manages the shopping centre.
