Last year, the "Kovelsilmash" plant operated at a profit for the first time in the past six years, despite maintaining a rather significant portion of the social sphere – a preventive care facility and a Palace of Culture and Technology, which do not pay for themselves at all. The flagship of local industry, which today employs 2,100 workers, is gradually emerging from crisis, has no wage arrears, and regularly pays taxes at all levels.
With great effort, it was possible to restore supplies of chains to Germany, preserve sales markets in Poland, Belarus, and Russia, and find new business partners in Lithuania. Last year, the enterprise was awarded a diploma as a laureate of the all-Ukrainian competition "100 Best Products of Ukraine." In the region, only three enterprises earned this highest distinction and title of winners.
The general director of "Kovelsilmash," Anatoliy Ponikarchuk, will report on such long-awaited achievements at the shareholders' meeting, which is to be held soon. But around these meetings an unhealthy agitation has already arisen regarding the fact that one of the shareholders – the Kharkiv limited liability company "Firm 'Vostok,'" which holds over 30 percent of the shares – has proposed adding to the agenda the issue of changing the governing management bodies – members of the supervisory board, the management board, and the audit commission. What is hidden behind the attempts to change the plant's leadership?
In August 2003, the regional branch of the State Property Fund in the Volyn region sold to the Kharkiv firm "Vostok" the state share of shares of OJSC "Kovelsilmash" (18.3 percent) for 1.6 million hryvnias on the International Stock Exchange, thereby significantly exceeding the annual planned indicators for privatization. The head of the regional branch of the State Property Fund, Ivan Ustyanchuk, informed journalists at the time that an effective owner had come to the enterprise with significant investments aimed at ensuring sustainable development and modernization of production. After all, the shareholder himself was not stingy with sweet promises. At a meeting with the city authorities, the leaders of "Vostok" also spoke about their investment intentions, emphasizing that the Russian market would be widely used. After all, the Kharkiv firm, in addition to agricultural machinery plants in the Kherson, Rivne, and Khmelnytskyi regions, also has a controlling stake in a similar enterprise in Kursk.
In production terms, "Vostok" is not a large firm; it is closer to stock companies. As Anatoliy Ponikarchuk asserts, over the entire year "Vostok" never presented a single investment plan regarding "Kovelsilmash." "We cooperate with them in the here-and-now mode," was how Anatoliy Myronovych commented on his relations with the representatives of "Vostok," who have repeatedly wanted to divide our plant. On the whole, the Kharkivites resemble a sort of American rentiers – that is, doing nothing, one can receive a share of the profit.
The noble intentions of the firm "Vostok," declared on paper and in government corridors, were shaken after the industrial group "KMT" from Vinnytsia recently acquired about 30 percent of the shares of the Kovel machine-building enterprise. "KMT" has long specialized in the production of oils and fats, but is not only a trading enterprise. Over the past four years, this industrial group has raised practically from ruins the Chernivtsi and Vinnytsia oil and fat combines. Soon it bought a controlling stake in the Mohyliv-Podilskyi machine-building plant, doubling turnover within just a year.
— We have not sold a single enterprise for destruction, although such offers have come to us, — Dmytro Didkovskyi, a representative of the industrial group "KMT," told a "Volyn" correspondent. — We are not a speculative office, but a firm that works for Ukraine and is categorically opposed to the destruction of domestic production.
The powerful shareholder from Vinnytsia, with an annual turnover of about 100 million dollars, plans to rationally use the production facilities of "Kovelsilmash" and introduce here the production of new products – tower cranes and prefabricated grain storage facilities. It is clear that such activity by the new co-owner of the Kovel plant was not to many people's liking, because the machine builders will make a choice in favor of a strong investor who will in practice ensure real expansion of production. Is that not why the firm "Vostok," which in two years has invested nothing in "Kovelsilmash," wants to remove its current leadership?
Yaroslav HAVRYLIUK