Photo: PhotoXPress

Since September, Aeroflot business class has been offering Aquanika water, produced by Gennady Timchenko’s Volga Group. This three-year contract and other government orders are helping the sanctioned company cope with losses.

Distributor won

Vladimir Ivanov, General Director of Aquanika, told RBC that Aquanika bottled water is now offered in business class on flights of the state airline Aeroflot. “Aeroflot has only two partners in soft drinks: us and Coca-Cola,” he emphasized. According to him, deliveries began on September 1 of this year, and the company won the tender for three years in July.

Aeroflot's press service did not respond to RBC's request on Monday.

The government procurement website contains information about the tender for the supply of bottled water for Aeroflot flights, which actually ended in the summer: the results were summed up on July 31. The contract amount is not specified. As part of the tender, two lots were awarded: the first concerned the supply of bottled water to serve business class passengers, the second - economy class. In the first case, applications were submitted by Aquanika, Helios, Coca-Cola HBC Eurasia and four other companies.

From the documentation it follows that the right to supply business class was won by Helios, not Aquanika. Ivanov explained to RBC that Helios is a distribution company that cooperates with Aquanika, and we are talking about exclusive cooperation under this contract.

Five companies, including the three listed above, competed for the supply of water to economy class passengers, but the winner of this lot was the Coca-Cola company (produces water under the brands Coca-Cola, Fanta, Sprite, Schweppes, Powerade, Bon Aqua, Nestea and Valser). “The Valser brand was presented as part of a tender,” confirmed communications manager at Coca-Cola HBC Eurasia Evgenia Mogileva, refusing to comment on its results.

“We didn’t want to win ourselves,” says Ivanov. “It’s not convenient for us to deal with logistics ourselves: the plant is far away, it’s easier through a Moscow distributor.” Interestingly, the supply price offered by Helios was ten kopecks lower than that of Aquanika. For example, bottled water with a volume of 0.25 liters was offered by Helios at a price of 5.8 rubles, and Aquanika announced a price of 5.9 rubles; water with a volume of 0.6 liters was offered for 13.25 and 13.35 rubles. respectively, with a volume of 1.35 liters - 26 and 26.1 rubles.

The Helios phone number listed in the SPARK database turned out to be inoperative, as was the company’s website. According to an extract from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, Helios LLC is 51% owned by Altek Consulting Inc., 49% by National Portfolio Ltd. Both companies are registered in the British Virgin Islands, their beneficiaries are unknown. From the government procurement protocol it follows that at the end of July 2015, Helios has been operating on the market for 1.8 years. According to information in SPARK, the company was registered on November 18, 2013.

Water for drivers

Aquanika was founded in 2007 and produces drinking water under the Aquanika brand, Mugo juices and Ministry of Soda soft drinks. In 2011, the company launched its own production in the Nizhny Novgorod region (up to 500 million liters per year), investments amounted to about 4 billion rubles. According to Ivanov, in 2013 the plant produced about 91 million liters of water.

According to SPARK, Aquanika’s revenue for 2014 amounted to 774.9 million rubles, the net loss was 1.7 billion rubles, the retained loss grew to 5.6 billion rubles: Ivanov said that such a serious loss was caused by that it is “a cumulative total summing up investments over recent years with accumulated interest.”

Until February 2012, the owner of Aquanika LLC was the Luxembourg company SVM Holding, then the Cypriot Aquanika Holding Ltd became the owner. At the end of June 2015, it became known that Gennady Timchenko decided to transfer the company from the Cyprus offshore Aquanika Holding Ltd. to a Russian legal entity. A message from the Federal Antimonopoly Service dated June 29, 2015 stated that 100% of Aquanika LLC was being purchased by Volga Group LLC - as of September 1, 2015, the transaction was completed.

Aquanika, along with other assets of Gennady Timchenko, fell under international sanctions. The entrepreneur himself was blacklisted by the United States on March 20, 2014, and on April 28 of the same year, the US Treasury also included the structures included in Timchenko’s business empire. In addition to Aquanika, sanctions included Avia Group, Avia Group Nord, Sakhatrans, five companies of the Stroytransgaz group, the railway operator Transoil and the Volga Group holding. Ivanov, in a conversation with RBC, then called it “strange and even absurd.”

Last year, according to the SPARK database, the company entered into one contract with Drinks TransService LLC (according to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, 51% owned by the Federal Passenger Company, which is 82.94% controlled by Russian Railways) for 89.6 million rubles. and two contracts with the Federal State Budgetary Institution “Kremlevsky Food Plant” (organizes purchases and meals for employees of the administration and the Presidential Administration) for 264 thousand rubles. The SPARK database also contains information that in 2015 Aquanika submitted an application to participate in the tender of the State Unitary Enterprise Moscow Metro for the supply of 300 thousand bottles of water with an initial contract amount of 3.6 million rubles. The press service of the State Unitary Enterprise "Moscow Metro" and JSC "FPK" on Monday evening were unable to promptly answer RBC's questions.

Participation in corporate procurement regulated by Federal Law No. 223 allows one to ignore the financial condition of the bidder, notes Kirill Kuznetsov, General Director of the Tenders.ru Center for Effective Procurement. “Recently, companies that have come under Western sanctions have become more actively involved in tenders organized by government agencies and state-owned companies,” the expert shares his observations. “However, it is difficult to say whether this began to happen because these companies came under sanctions or because the entire economy is in crisis, and government and corporate purchases continue to shape demand.”

Government orders in all countries remain a very “appetizing piece” of the market, adds Alexander Stroganov, general director of the Center for Government Orders: first of all, it provides guaranteed production capacity for a long time.

With the participation of Anastasia Napalkova

Gennady Timchenko will give Aeroflot a drink