Romanian´s state privatisation agency APAPS (Bucharest; www.apaps.ro) is making a second attempt to sell its 53% stake in the country´s largest chemical producer, Oltchim (Riminicu Vilcea; www.oltchim.ro) to an investor with “at least five years´ experience” in chemicals. A deal is being hampered by the company´s existing debt burden of USD 215m, which is guaranteed by the state. Russian oil and petrochemicals group Lukoil Neftekhim (RUS-101000 Moskau; www.lukoil.com) and Austrian private equity group Vienna Capital Partners (VCP, A-1010 Wien; www.vcpag.com) are being tipped as possible buyers. VCM already owns around 80% of Hungary´s Borsodchem (H-3702 Kazincbarcika; www.borsodchem.hu).

In May 2001, APAPS attempted to sell its Oltchim stake to Canadian mining company Exall Resources (Toronto; www.exall.com) for USD 10m. However, the deal fell apart a year later because Exall had not followed through on its pledge to invest USD 150m in the Romanian firm.

In addition to PVC, PVC copolymers and PC, Oltchim´s portfolio also includes PVC profiles windows and doors (“Ramplast”) as well as sandwich insulation sheets of PVC and PUR. The company has been in loss for the past two years, but is believed to be headed toward break-even.

While figures for 2002 showed sales of EUR 186.8m against a loss of EUR 29m in the first nine months of 2003 the loss was only EUR 2.3m on sales of EUR 135.6m.

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