Mykolaiv Shipyard sells a refrigerated vessel that was built 30 years ago

The state-owned enterprise «Mykolaiv Shipyard» (formerly the 61 Kommunar Plant) is selling the unfinished hull of the Project 13450 refrigerated vessel, its components and materials. The starting price of the lot is over 21 million hryvnias.

The relevant auction is posted on the Prozorro Sale website.

It is noted that the ship began to be built at the plant at the request of a private customer in 1995, but for a number of objective reasons it was not completed and is still on the plant's slipway. Metalworking on the vessel began in the same year, and the hull was laid on slipway №3 in early 1998.

The lot description also indicates that the technical condition of the object is unsuitable for further use. Its restoration is also impractical and technically complicated due to long-term storage, and the completion of the vessel is economically unprofitable.

In addition, according to the conclusion of the State Research and Forensic Centre of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the ship's long-term stay on an open slipway does not allow for its completion and launch.

«The hull has multiple through corrosion and cracks in the plating. Some structures have corrosion of up to 40%. No work has been carried out at the study site to complete the hull and preserve it over the past twenty-five years. The technical condition of the unfinished hull of the vessel, due to its long term exposure to the open slipway (25 years), does not meet the necessary IMO registration requirements, which makes it impossible to complete and launch it and makes it impractical. Given the above, the forensic expert found that the object of the study cannot be used for its intended purpose — completed and brought to a state of fitness for its intended purpose,» the report says.

The auction was supposed to start on 4 August, but it did not take place due to the absence of participants.

In a commentary to PN, the shipyard's director, Serhii Pylypchuk, said that in 1993, the shipyard signed a contract for the construction of the vessel with the Greek company Sea Emerland S.A. (a subsidiary of Laskaridis Shipping). However, the vessel was never completed.

The customer sued and the court ordered the plant to pay 267 million hryvnias in compensation. The CEO says that the plant should reimburse the debt in cash, not with the ship itself. That is, it is legally impossible to give the vessel to the customer. That's why it was decided to put the property up for auction.

«I decided to go through the auction procedure so that there would be no unnecessary questions and everything would be open. However, the auction did not take place — there were no bidders, so we understand that the price offered was not competitive. First of all, because it is necessary to spend a lot of money to prepare the vessel for its further transportation to the place of sale. I have spoken to people who deal with scrap metal, and they all say that the cost of delivery to the dismantling site, plus metal polishing, is around 3-3,500 hryvnias per kilogram. If we take the weight of the ship and this data, the price will go beyond that 21 million hryvnias,» he explained.

Given that the first auction failed, the ship will be put up for sale for the second time at a 30% lower estimated value. In addition, Serhii Pylypchuk noted that not all the proceeds from the sale will be used to repay the debt to Sea Emerland S.A.

Earlier, it was reported that the Kingdom of Denmark is considering using the territory of the state-owned enterprise «Mykolaiv Shipyard» (formerly the 61 Communards plant) for public space.