Agriculture, Estonia, Investments, Markets and Companies, Mergers and take-overs

The acquisition includes a plant for processing rapeseed along with real estate properties and entailed assets.

The first auction took place in July, but none of the interested parties issued their bids then – they considered the initial price of 10.4 million euros to be too high. The auction that was held on Wednesday was won by Baltic Agro that bid 8,020,000 euros.

Werol was the only plant for processing rapeseed oil in Estonia. The plant refines oil from pressed rapeseeds and sells it as cooking oil. The production capacity of the production plant that has been working since 1998 is 70,000 tonnes.

Werol had started establishing a new line for pressing rapeseeds before going bankrupt, which would have had the capacity of producing 145,000 tonnes per year. The new part of the plant has not been working due to the financial difficulties that hit the company early this year.

The chairman of the supervisory board of Baltic Agro Christian Junker stated that he was pleased with the investment. “Baltic Agro is currently one of the major companies on the Estonian market that purchases rapeseed and hence we were interested in having Werol continue operating in the future as well,” he said.

Managing director of Baltic Agro Ants Puusta was certain that the deal would support and enhance their company’s operations in the Baltic States and would make it possible to use their experiences in processing rapeseed grown in other countries as well.