The Azerbaijani owner of Vodafone Ukraine has purchased the United Mining and Chemical Company for almost ₴4B.

The State Property Fund (SPFU) sold 100% of the United Mining and Chemical Company’s shares to the Cemin Ukraine firm, which offered ₴3.94B ($96M) for the state asset that the SPFU had tried to sell numerous times. The buyer is obliged to preserve the enterprise’s main activities, invest at least ₴400M ($10M) in technical conversion and modernization, and pay all debts to the state and creditors.

Cemin Ukraine is indirectly owned by Azerbaijan’s NEQSOL Holding. Its largest asset in Ukraine is the mobile operator Vodafone Ukraine, which NEQSOL Holding acquired at the end of 2019 from Russian MTS group for $734M. The NEQSOL Holding group operates in the oil and gas, telecommunications, high-tech, and construction industries in Britain, the US, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, the UAE, and other countries.

UMCC is the largest Ukrainian enterprise engaged in the extraction and beneficiation of titanium ore concentrates. The company includes mining and beneficiation plants in Vilnohirskyi and Irshanskyi.