The Donetsk Oblast Economic Court declared one of Ukraine’s biggest confectionery producers AVK bankrupt on July 8, news site Finbalance reported on July 13, citing the court ruling.
Due to the company’s debts, the court ordered the liquidation of the company. According to the ruling, the company’s assets and property are insufficient to pay back creditors.
AVK had a number of debts. In 2020, the Supreme Court amended the company’s creditors’ claims register. At the time, the company owed more than Hr 3 billion to several banks: Hr 291 million to the All-Ukrainian Development Bank, Hr 357 million to Raiffeisen Bank, Hr 1.34 billion to Prominvestbank, and Hr 1.2 billion to Sberbank.
In addition, AVK took over Hr 1.1 billion in mortgage loans: Hr 200 million from the All-Ukrainian Development Bank, Hr 43 million from Raiffeisen Bank, Hr 489 million from Prominvestbank and Hr 442 million from Sberbank.
In 2016, when bankruptcy proceedings against AVK started, Volodymyr Avramenko, the company’s beneficiary, stated that “the company’s creditors are the banks of the occupier country (Russia), and it is difficult to negotiate with them,” Ukrainska Pravda reported. However, only one of the creditors was a Russian bank, Sberbank.
AVK was founded in 1991 and has been producing confectionery since 1994. The company is one of the three biggest confectionery producers in Ukraine, along with Roshen and Konti. Roshen is owned by ex-President Petro Poroshenko, while Konti belongs to ex-lawmaker Borys Kolesnikov.
AVK’s main factory is in Dnipro, a city of 1 million people some 500 kilometers south of Kyiv.
The company lost control of its two other factories in the eastern cities of Luhansk and Donetsk in 2014, when they were occupied by Russia-backed militants.
According to Ukrainska Pravda, AVK lost a lion’s share of its revenue when Russia started its war against Ukraine in 2014. Until then, 70% of AVK’s revenue came from Russia, where the company held 6% of the chocolate market.
