The story
Founded by National Property Fund in 1994, in Kralupy nad Vltavou.1
The beginning of the Unipetrol group dates back to 1939, when the development of the STW chemical plant in Záluží u Litvínova was initiated. In 1975–1976, polypropylene and polyethylene production plants were commissioned, and the ethylene unit was put into operation in 1979. Two years later, the development of a new refinery in Litvínov (NRL) was completed. The year 1993 saw the restructuring of the refinery-petrochemical industry, including Chemopetrol at that time, which was later incorporated into Unipetrol.
Unipetrol was founded in 1994 by the National Property Fund in one of the stages of the privatisation of the Czech petrochemical industry. In 1996, the Chemopetrol refineries in Litvínov and Kaučuk in Kralupy were separated into a company called Česká rafinérská.
Privatisation
In 2001, Zeman’s government decided to initiate the privatisation process of the majority state share. Although the joint privatisation committee suggested the winner should be the British company RotchEnergy, which offered 444 mil. euro (about 14.5 bil. CZK), in December 2001 the government decided to sell it to the Czech company Agrofert for 361 mil. euro (about 11.7 bil. CZK at that time). Agrofert however never paid for the transaction and asked for the privatisation agreement to be terminated; therefore Špidla’s government decided on a new public tender in November 2002.
In January 2004, seven companies or syndicates made a preliminary offer in the privatisation tender. From the six valid bids, the offers by the Slovak Penta Finance, Russian Tatneft and Kazakh state-owned company KazMunayGas (which offered the highest ceiling within 9-16 bil. CZK) were rejected. The government selected only the preliminary offers of the Polish company PKN Orlen (supported by Agrofert), the Hungarian MOL, and Shell for the shortlist. The final offer was then filed by PKN Orlen alone – 11.3 bil. CZK for a 63% share in Unipetrol and 1.7 bil. CZK for the claims of ČKA against Unipetrol companies. This offer was accepted by the government in April 2004, and the sale was completed in 2005.
From Wikipedia’s article on Orlen Unipetrol, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5