NKMZ asks the authorities to suspend the expropriation of property

Novokramatorsky Mashinobudivny Zavod (NKMZ) appealed to the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky with a request to suspend the implementation of the decision on the expropriation of the plant’s property. This is stated in an open letter published on the NKMZ website.

On July 19, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a resolution in order to avoid the seizure of equipment by the Russian aggressor.

“We kindly ask you to suspend the implementation of the resolution and instruct the competent authorities, together with the leadership of NKMZ, to find a reasonable and effective solution for organizing the production of military equipment,” the letter says.

At the same time, it is mentioned that NKMZ is the leader in machine building in Ukraine, and investments in the re-equipment of the plant over the past 20 years have exceeded $500 million. The company employs 7.6 thousand people who still receive wages.

“We learned about the decision from the media, which also wrote that the machine tools and equipment will go not to a state-owned enterprise, but to a private one, and in whose interests the flagship of Ukrainian engineering will be destroyed,” the company notes.

At the same time, as NKMZ notes, the Deputy Maxim Yefimov supported the adoption of the resolution most of all.

“Why does MP Yefimov, who himself is the president and co-owner of the largest Ukrainian manufacturer of special cast and forged products of individual and small-scale production for steel industry, shipbuilding, and energy, but removed the equipment,  only he knows himself,” the appeal says.

NKMZ also notes that machine tools have already been purchased for the production of military equipment specified in the resolution and will be delivered to Ukraine in 9 months.

“And the actual dismantling, disassembly, packaging, transportation from NKMZ to a new location, construction work, installation, debugging and commissioning of 25-30 machines at the same time will also take at least 9 months. During this time, new machines will arrive from Europe and it will be necessary to remove the old ones from the foundation and install new ones,” the letter says.

The enterprise states that with the loss of a continuous production cycle, NKMZ will not be able to produce equipment, and thousands of people will be deprived of their jobs.

“Only a person who is interested in the destruction of NKMZ and who wants to enrich himself at the expense of the state budget could offer such a scam by deceit and disinformation,” the appeal concludes.

As GMK Center reported earlier, on July 19, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a resolution No. 7566 about some issues of the forced alienation of property under the legal regime of martial law, by which it decided to transfer the property of NKMZ to state ownership.

This decision was made against the backdrop of the existing threat of loss of production capacity of NKMZ due to the possibility of its capture by the Russian aggressor.

At the same time, as the president and co-owner of NKMZ George Skudar notes,in interview NB, the decision of the parliament to transfer the enterprise to state ownership came as a surprise to him.

NKMZ announced on the conservation of production facilities on February 28. According to information of the enterprise trade union committee, the employees were paid wages for June in the amount of 2/3 of the tariff rate.

Novokramatorsky Mashinobudivny Zavod (NKMZ) is the largest individual heavy engineering enterprise in Europe. The plant, among other things, specializes in the production of rolling, iron&steel equipment. The plant delivering includes 79 countries of the world. Among them are France, Italy, Poland and the CIS countries.