The Crimean economic court has initiated liquidation procedures of the tobacco plant of Feodossia that was earlier announced bankrupt.

An arbitral manager has been appointed to the company. The plant belongs to a Cyprus-registered company, Tabinvest. The Feodossia tobacco plant once led the market among local cigarette makers. It had registered remarkable performance in 2001 and 2002, shown a 30 per cent growth from three years before and brought its national market share to a record 2.6 per cent in 2002. New cigarette brands were then launched, and the share of filters in the facility’s output portfolio reached 13 per cent. But in 2003, following a change of owner and management reshuffle, production plummeted 54 per cent from the previous year, and the plant started losing its position at a break-neck pace. Eventually, the company initiated bankruptcy procedures. Noteworthily, some of Feodossian officials suggest that the new owners’ intention from the very outset was to go out of business and take advantage of the plant’s land favourably located on the very seashore, an assumption that is flatly denied by the company’s management. (vt)