155 mm calibre artillery ammunition. (source: SITA/AP)
A new investment worth €14 million is heading to Sobrance, eastern Slovakia. The Košice-based company ARM Servis wants to renew production in the former Vihorlat plant. The company has submitted the project to the authorities for an environmental impact assessment (EIA).
“The content of the proposed activity will be the production and processing of rolled steel products,” the document reads. “Technology for the production of metal ammunition cases will be installed in the production area.”
Production of ammunition cases
In Sobrance the ARM Servis company wants to produce munition bodies for high explosive artillery shells of 122 and 155 millimetre calibre. It plans to produce 100,000 annually and create 220 jobs. The investment is to be divided into smaller projects.
The existing production hall with an area of more than 4,500 square metres is to be rebuilt, and reconstruction is planned for the administration building, warehouses and transformer station. A new paint shop building is also planned.
The production is to be linked with the production of artillery shells by the ZVS Holding armaments factory in Snina, 50 kilometres away.
Vihorlat Snina, to whose Sobrance premises the new investment is directed, used to produce cranes, steel structures, castings, boilers and hydraulic cylinders. In the 1990s, the company’s capacities were used by the steelmaker VSŽ (today U.S. Steel Košice), which was its owner.
In 2001, the Vihorlat company went bankrupt and production soon stopped. In 2004, the company was bought by ZVS Holding, an armaments company with plants in Snina and Dubnica nad Váhom, western Slovakia. It is half owned by the state and half by the MSM Group of the Czech armourer Michal Strnad. MSM has been producing 155 millimetre calibre artillery ammunition for decades, which is compatible with weapon systems and howitzers around the world.
Who is behind ARM Servis?
The ARM Servis company was launched in 2020 and has been majority owned since last year by SK Special Goods Trading. The company behind it is UA Special Goods Trading based in Florida, USA.
The ultimate beneficial owner of the company is 71-year-old Liubov Yefimova, who has US citizenship. She has several companies in the US and the UK, making money from arms contracts destined for Ukraine. She is the mother of former Ukrainian MP Maxim Yefimov.
In 2018, she bought the Parkovy convention centre in Kyiv, which belonged to former pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
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