Hundreds of jobs to go at Romania’s Arpechim

The future of the plant, which makes products including ethylene, propylene, polyethylene and acrylonitrile, has been in doubt for months pending the outcome of negotiations to sell Arpechim between its parent and Romania’s top oil and gas group Petrom and government-owned chemicals producer Oltchim.

Petrom, part of the Austrian OMV energy group, wants to divest its inefficient Pitesti petrochemicals plant to Oltchim, a major ethylene customer of Arpechim. The facility has annual capacity to produce up to 200,000 tonnes of ethylene and 95,000 tonnes of propylene, and is a significant domestic polymer supplier.

Employees at Arpechim continued to clock on for normal 8-hour shifts throughout the past year although the plant was idle. But now, those under threat of redundancy have been told they will remain on full pay only for another 60 days. If the Oltchim takeover has not been completed in that time, the workers will lose their jobs and receive compensation payments, reported Romanian news service Mediafax.

Oltchim has issued a non-binding offer to acquire the plant where it says it plans to invest around €100m to upgrade the petrochemicals facility. But government delays in proceeding with the takeover have put the Arpechim workers’ jobs in doubt.

Petrom has a second, smaller petrochemicals operation at its second refining and chemicals site at Petrobrazi.

The picture is complicated by a formal antitrust investigation in Romania launched by the EU Commission into government plans to aid Oltchim in the form of a €135m debt-to-equity swap and a €340m state guarantee.

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