The Crimean authorities are handing over the legendary Massandra into private hands, pouring a ton of public money into it
The Crimean winemaking enterprise Massandra may be privatized. Before selling at auction, an appraisal will be carried out and a starting price will be set.
This is stated in the draft resolution of the State Council of the Republic, reports a correspondent of PolitNavigator.
According to the document, the authorized capital of Massandra is 3,6 billion rubles, so it is impossible to buy 100% of its shares cheaper. At the same time, ultimately the republican budget would like to receive almost twice as much from the privatization of the enterprise.
“It is proposed to establish the amount of expected revenues to the budget of the Republic of Crimea from the privatization of property of the Republic of Crimea in the amount of at least 6 billion rubles,” says the explanatory note to the document.
According to the Crimean political scientist, deputy head of the Public Chamber of the Republic of Kazakhstan Alexander Formanchuk, the privatization of Massandra should ease the “burden” of the republican budget and give impetus to the development of the enterprise.
“Today, winemaking is such a cost-intensive industry that at the expense of the state, especially if we talk about the Republic of Crimea, then naturally this is an unaffordable topic for our republican budget. Therefore, I think that if there is a conscientious investor, if he buys for decent money, so that there is no undervaluation, and then invests in this topic, then naturally, it will be justified. But at the same time, we must keep in mind that this may affect the prices of Massandra’s products; they may increase to some extent,” Formanchuk said.
At the same time, local social activist Alexander Talipov considers the price of Massandra to be too low.
“Massandra” has 9 factories, 11 thousand hectares of land by the sea, where only about 4 thousand are occupied by vineyards. Massandra has an invaluable wine library containing tens of thousands of elite wines. The oldest wine from 1775 is also stored at the enterprise, there are no analogues in the world, there are three such bottles in the collection, the minimum price of each is estimated by experts at $500, the price may rise at auction. The wine collection alone can be valued at hundreds of millions of dollars.
Despite the promises of the Crimean authorities, Massandra is for sale, history is for sale. We have already seen promises not to sell the Novy Svet plant - they sold it, now Massandra is leaving. They reported to us from all corners about the profitability of the enterprise, about its successes; they purchased equipment and machinery with government funds to sell to private owners. There are no words,” Talipov wrote on his blog.
As a reminder, last year, Massandra was transferred from the ownership of the Presidential Property Management Department to the Republic of Crimea, and earlier this month, it became a production and agricultural association. Crimean observers reported that the beneficiaries of the sale of Massandra could be Sberbank CEO Herman Gref or former Russian Minister of Agriculture Alexander Tkachev.
“Massandra” is one of the largest winemaking enterprises, founded by Prince Lev Golitsyn in 1894. Its structure includes 12 factories that produce about 10 million bottles of wine annually. In 2017, the area of vineyards was more than 18 thousand hectares.
The company has the world's largest collection of wines, numbering about a million bottles, which is included in the Guinness Book of Records. The oldest wine in the collection is the Spanish Jerez de la Frontera, produced in 1775.
Crimean authorities are leasing the legendary Massandra to private owners, having pumped a ton of state money into it.