Poland sells historic shipyards for EUR 82 million
Photo Gdynia shipyard
(WARSAW) - Poland announced Thursday that it had sold two of its three historic shipyards, which played a key role in bringing down its former communist government and were later the focus of a subsidy battle with the EU.
The ARP, a government agency responsible for handling privatisations, said that United International Trust had paid a total of 364 million zlotys (82 million euros, 115 million dollars) for the yards at Gdynia and Szczecin on Poland's northern Baltic coast.
Warsaw had on May 14 announced that it had accepted United International Trust's bid, noting that it had pledged to continue producing ships at the yards.
The ARP confirmed that on Thursday, adding that the buyer was also planning "other forms of economic activity" in parallel to shipbuilding.
Gdynia was sold for over 270 million zlotys, and Szczecin for 94 million zlotys, the ARP added.
Warsaw has revealed little about the buyer, only saying that it had acted through an an intermediary, Stichting Particulier Fonds Greenrights, which like United International Trust is based in Curacao, a Caribbean offshore haven run by the Netherlands.
In November, the European Commission, which polices competition rules in the 27-nation European Union, ordered Poland to sell the yards, after ruling that Warsaw had doled out illegal state aid to keep them in business.
The proceeds of the sales must be used to pay off the yards' creditors and the state subsidies which were faulted by the European Commission.
The no-strings tendering process was open to all, from shipbuilders to bidders with an eye on the yards' real estate -- leaving some 9,000 employees nervously awaiting news of their future.
The issue of the third yard in Gdynia's neighbouring port of Gdansk is being handled separately by Brussels, which has yet to give its verdict on a restructuring plan there.
The shipyards hold particular significance for many Poles because they were the cradle of protests against the communist old order.
Dozens of people were killed there when security forces fired on workers demonstrating against food price rises in 1970.
In 1980, a strike at what was then the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk led to the creation of the trade union Solidarity, which snowballed across the shipbuilding industry into a nationwide protest movement.
Driven underground by a military clampdown in 1981, Solidarity reemerged to negotiate a peaceful end to communist rule in 1989.
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