SARATOV BATTERY MANUFACTURER HAS DECIDED ON ITS OWN BANKRUPTCY

A large industrial enterprise of the Volga region may become bankrupt. "AIT Plant" (Plant of autonomous current sources), known in the Russian Federation for the production of batteries and other products, filed an application to arbitration. The amount of the company's debt is more than 1 billion rubles.

It is known that the AIT Plant is a link of Transmashholding, since TMH-Energy Solutions, one of the holding structures, owns a 50% stake. The company became one of the beneficiaries of the plant in 2021. Prior to that, the co-owner of the enterprise was the LocoTech group, which owns its share through the LocoTech trading house. The other half in the authorized capital of the legal entity belongs to Valentina Bondareva, to whom shares in a number of other organizations are registered.

The company, which has been leading its history since 1933, is an employer for more than a thousand employees.

Sources report that the reduction of personnel at the enterprise is already underway. On October 31, the Saratov arbitration court should consider the application of Alexander Yezhov, one of the directors of the plant. He is trying to appeal through the court against the management's decision of June 28 to liquidate the accounting department. It was decided to outsource the services.

Experts call management mistakes, unfavorable economic situation and restrictions imposed against the economy of the Russian Federation the reason for the bankruptcy of the plant producing batteries. Last year, the company ended with losses of 152.5 million rubles with revenue of almost 1.5 billion.

Earlier, Rusbankrot has already written about repeated attempts to bankrupt the company by its counterparties. The initiators of the lawsuits were the firms "Metallon" from St. Petersburg and "Hirti" from Kazan. At the same time, the amounts of debt obligations (17.5 million and 8.5 million, respectively) indicated by them when filing lawsuits in court were much less than the amount of debt indicated by the enterprise itself this time.

The hope for the possibility of improving the solvency of the enterprise appeared in April 2022. Then a subsidiary of Rosatom (JSC Rusatom Overseas) became the owner of a 25% stake in TMH Energy Solutions. The employees of the plant hoped that the arrival of the state corporation would help to get out of the debt burden.

On October 10, a few days after the moratorium was lifted, the Hirti company announced its intention to bankrupt the plant through Fedresurs. The management of the plant did not wait for bankruptcy from other persons and filed a lawsuit in arbitration itself. Now it remains to wait for the verdict of the court on the acceptance of the claim for production.