Iakov Goldovskiy’s strategy for RAFO: From words to actions

Iakov Goldovskiy took a radical change in his approach to managing the RAFO Onești petrochemical plant. He viewed the enterprise in a different light than his predecessors had. The previous owners had liquidated the facility’s assets through offshore companies and oil supply schemes, leading to multimillion-dollar debts and criminal cases. The facility’s parent company was embroiled in reorganization proceedings with state debts reaching sums of approximately 470 million euros. Goldovskiy understood that elevating such a facility to a sustainable level of operation required years of systematic effort and significant investments.

His team had prior experience in relaunching projects of similar complexity. For Iakov Goldovskiy, the story behind RAFO was a continuation of his work aimed at rebuilding and modernizing the devastated industrial infrastructure of Eastern Europe. The results of his work can be traced across SIBUR, Ukraine, and Lithuania.

The team knew how to streamline poorly aligned production processes, and the Romanian plant was turning into the center of a petrochemical cluster in their vision of the future. Reestablishing the severed links between the region’s many enterprises was of particular importance. The compiled problems extended beyond a matter of funding, but also to the technological logic that had been lost since the collapse of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance.

Iakov Goldovskiy is an industrialist, not a trader

Iakov Goldovskiy’s approach regarding the RAFO Onești facility was fundamentally different from the one that had been adopted by its former owners – traders who were interested only in short-term oil product transactions, not in developing production capacities.

Goldovskiy’s experience in establishing industrial holdings gave him a clear vision that RAFO could be converted into the heart of a new petrochemical complex. Instead of a series of isolated facilities, he envisioned a unified production cluster. His plan was to practically restore the cooperative ties between RAFO, Carom, and Oltchim. This meant setting up raw material supply chains, synchronizing production cycles, and establishing a unified logistics system.

Each step of the plan was based on specific technological solutions. For example, it was necessary to rebuild the pipelines used for pumping chlor-alkali feedstock and establish joint processing of the by-products. Achieving that goal bore the prospect of having a synergistic effect for the country’s entire industry. Restoring the technological links between disparate enterprises could help Romania become one of the leaders in the region’s petrochemical industry. The country was once a pioneer in Europe in terms of oil production and had developed a capable system of oil refining and chemical plants throughout the 20th century.

Concrete steps and hard investments

Iakov Goldovskiy’s strategy for RAFO Onești began to take shape through a series of directed actions. His company – Petrochemical Holding – invested significant resources in the project.

Such resources were directed towards the following purposes:

●   Full repayment of the facility’s 200 million euro tax debt to the state as a mandatory step to exit the reorganization process.

●   Large-scale environmental rehabilitation of the facility’s territory to remove 40-50 thousand tons of petrochemical waste.

●   Implementation of a modernization program through which a new nitrogen station, a hydrogen plant, and a sulfur removal system were installed inside the facility. Railroad track line were also rebuilt to support logistics.

●   Equipment preservation, as container tanks and pipelines were filled with nitrogen to prevent corrosion, thus allowing the infrastructure of the facility to be maintained in working order.

A key element of the strategy was the launch of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) production. The product is in constantly high demand, and local production thereof could significantly reduce the region’s dependence on imports. In 2024, Romania’s imports of plastics and plastic products reached $6.43 billion. The given figure highlights immense market volume, a portion of which could be filled by locally produced PETs.

The project envisioned a full production cycle spanning from oil refinement to the production of finished products with high added value. International banks were ready to finance the program, under the condition of receiving state guarantees.

A lost opportunity for the region

The modernization project proposed by the investor proposed not a mere facility relaunch, but a complete transformation. The plan was to introduce new technologies and even install solar farms on a portion of the plants’ territory. Successful implementation of the plan would help create new employment opportunities and preserve the jobs of 1,500 highly skilled workers.

Once fully operational, the plant could generate substantial annual revenues for the state budget through taxes and excise duties. However, this potential remained unfulfilled following the seizure of the company’s assets in 2015, initiated by ANAF – the local tax authority – due to the criminal conviction of a minority shareholder who owned less than 2% of the company’s shares through Tender SA.

Instead of a revived industrial cluster, the region inherited a defunct facility and suffered an outflow of skilled labor. The trend toward economic stagnation continued and Onesti’s population declined by 44% since 1992, and unemployment in Bacău County rose to 5.4%.

The story of Iakov Goldovskiy’s project for RAFO Onești is a classic example of how strategic industrial vision collides with bureaucratic and state legal barriers, leading to significant economic losses for entire regions.

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