As it became known to "Real Vremya", one of the founders of Danaflex Group of Companies, Airat Bashirov, left the post of General Director of one of the largest enterprises of the Group in terms of revenue - CJSC Danaflex, passing it to his younger brother Marat. The departure of Bashirov Sr. from operational management may be connected with completion of the process of merger of four enterprises with total assets value of 10 billion rubles into a single holding. "As the head of the holding company, I have to take control of all four plants rather than concentrate on one," he explained to Real Time the essence of the transformation within the company.

The rotation of general directors of DanaFlex plants

It became known at the beginning of the week that the General Director of CJSC DanaFlex, acting as the parent company and guarantor-guarantor of all key investment projects of DanaFlex Group, was changed. On September 2 Marat Bashirov (the younger brother of the company's president - editor's note) was appointed to this post, according to the data of SPARK-Interfax system. Prior to that, in August he left the post of the head of Yelabuga company "Danaflex-Alabuga" LLC, resident of "Alabuga" SEZ. And Airat Bashirov himself is not listed as the head of any of his three Russian companies "Danaflex", although he remains a beneficiary with different shares.

Thus, at the end of August Aidar Galiullin was appointed Director General of Danaflex Alabuga. At the same time, the General Director of "Danaflex-Nano" changed - Aidar Safin became him. Sources in the industry made a bold assumption to Real Time that the chain reaction of the last personnel reshuffles at DanaFlex was caused by the chief's desire to concentrate on bringing the foreign enterprise to the project level. "Perhaps he decided to go to the Czech Republic to take over the DGPack plant manually," said the source. - It opened in March this year and should soon reach the design level of flexible film production. Probably, there are difficulties, as it is not easy to operate remotely from Kazan. Indeed, lately Airat Bashirov has been outside Russia, but, as it turned out later, he went on holiday.

The President stays where he is.

- I didn't go anywhere: as I managed the company from my office in Kazan, I'm still there," Airat Bashirov denied the version of the "Czech Escape" in a conversation with Real Time. - I'm just on vacation for a week now abroad.

Apparently, the founder of "Danaflex" once again managed to make sure that one can't leave the company unattended for a day. Even the weekly absence of the chief, and especially after personnel decisions in management positions, generates confusion.

But the most important thing is that Airat Bashirov confirmed the information that he was moving away from the operational management of the separate Kazan-based enterprise "Danaflex" to head the fundamentally new holding structure of "Danaflex". Some details of the transformation were disclosed by Bashirov himself. According to him, four production enterprises (two in Kazan, one in Alabuga Special Economic Zone and one in Prosteyev, Czech Republic) are united into a single holding company Danaflex. Accordingly, they will be subordinated to the management company headed by Airat Bashirov.

- This is due not only to the Czech project, but also to the transformation of the management structure," he said, adding mysteriously that there were several changes. - We now have four plants in the Danaflex Group. As the head of the holding company, I cannot concentrate on one site. I have to take control of all four plants. That is why we have a holding structure, and I am the head of it.

Bashirov did not specify the legal name of the management company. According to him, new appointments of managers at each of the four plants were made before that. "In fact, nobody has gone anywhere," said Airat Bashirov. - We swapped several directors. This is a normal rotation. And the Czech factory was headed by Evdzhi Bitzowski".

Airat Bashirov: "As the head of the holding company, I cannot concentrate on one site. I have to take control of all four plants. That's why we have a holding structure and I am in charge of it".

Offshore State Support Recipients

It was not possible to find out how the share capital of DanaFlex Group will change as a result of merger into the holding structure. "You are a little ahead of events - you ask early on," said the head of the company. Today JSC Danaflex owns 100% of Kazan's Danaflex-nano (the capacity of the plant is 6 thousand tons, specializing in the production of nano-coated film) and 49% of Danaflex-Alabuga (51% is owned personally by Irat Bashirov), capacity - up to 1 thousand tons.

Meanwhile, the shareholder structure of CJSC Danaflex remains opaque: the majority shareholder is Dialog-Invest LLC and the Cyprus company Checkling Management Limited. The ultimate beneficiaries of the group are individuals, including those from Tatarstan. According to the results of 2018, CJSC Danaflex received revenue of 3.4 billion rubles and net profit of 304 million rubles. Danaflex-nano earned much more: its revenue amounted to 8.8 billion rubles and net profit - 181 million rubles.

"Danaflex-Alabuga actively uses federal support measures. In March 2017, the company entered into an agreement with the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation on the provision of RUB 72.9 million in subsidies to reimburse part of the costs of interest payment on loans received in 2014-2019 in Russian credit institutions and state corporation Bank for Development and Foreign Economic Affairs (Vnesheconombank), as well as in international financial institutions established under international agreements in which the Russian Federation participates, for the implementation of a comprehensive investment project. So far 52 million have been received - the last tranche is expected at the end of this year.

In addition, the Industrial Development Fund has allocated a loan of 500 million rubles. Another 443 million has been invested by the company itself. According to the project parameters, by 2022 the company should reach the revenue of 19 billion rubles, create 105 jobs and transfer 1.5 billion rubles of taxes.

Czech plant - with the support of the Czech authorities

The Czech factory DGPack, worth 40 million euros, is almost a twin brother of the Elabuga Danaflex Alabuga. It also covers the entire spectrum of food packaging: from relatively simple laminates for confectionery products and groceries to the most sophisticated packaging solutions for coffee, retort packs for animal feed and even baby food bags. However, it was essential for proximity to European customers. The application was submitted to CzechInvest and the DanaFlex project also received state support, but only from the Czech authorities.

"At that time, 77 investment projects worth over CZK 43.6 billion were approved with the expected creation of 4,746 new jobs. Investors will be able to receive the maximum amount of CZK 10.34 billion from state investment incentives for these projects," says the CzechInvest website. Airat Bashirov himself confirmed that the plant was built in an industrial zone. The businessman is satisfied with the amount of support from the Czech authorities, but he did not go into details.