Acron and Azot Cherkasy Join Competition for Odesa Portside

According to a local daily, two companies, Acron (Russia) and Azot Cherkasy (AZOT: Susp) officially confirmed that they are interested in buying into Odessa Portside Plant (OPP), the state-owned producer of nitrogen fertilizers located in Yuzhniy port. The State Property Fund is going to sell its 99.52% state in OPP by the late October, with the remainder distributed among employees. The starting price is UAH 2.5 mln (USD 495 mln). Vladimir Nesterenko: So far, three companies officially expressed their interest in OPP, Eurochem (Russia), Acron (Russia), and Azot Cherkasy (Ukraine). We do not alter our expectation that a Russian company having (directly or not) access to natural gas resources and ability to deliver gas to Ukraine, is the most likely winner. Despite the fact that Acron does have some gas assets, among these three we bet on Eurochem due to its large size and closer relations with Gazprom.