Leading partner ousted in heavily subsidized Sillamäe textile waste plant
Greenful Holding B.V., previously the largest shareholder in companies building a textile waste plant in Sillamäe backed by €39 million in Just Transition funds, now holds just 2.3 percent.
In January of this year, the Estonian Business and Innovation Agency (EIS) announced it would award €39 million in Just Transition funding to a company planning to build a textile waste sorting and shredding center, a facility for producing construction panels from textile fiber and a factory to manufacture building panels — an investment expected to total around €100 million.
The three companies planning to enter the textile waste processing business initially shared a common shareholder: Greenful Holding B.V., headed by former payday loan entrepreneur Toomas Allikas.
On Monday, business daily Äripäev reported that Allikas's firm has since become a minor shareholder in the project. According to sources, this shift was driven by dissatisfaction among partners over his failure to cover hundreds of thousands of euros in costs related to permit applications and other activities, his unfulfilled promise to attract international investors and his previous personal bankruptcy, which has made securing bank loans more difficult.
As ERR has previously reported, 80 percent of the funding required for the project is expected to come from bank loans.
According to the business register, in July of this year, the shareholders of Greenful Sillamäe — Greenful Holding B.V., MovePrep OÜ and OÜ Hundipea —signed a resolution to amend the company's articles of association. The change increased the share capital from €10,000 to €210,000 and excluded Greenful Holding B.V. from the preemptive right to subscribe to newly issued shares.
Similar amendments were also made by the shareholders of Greenful SIP and Tekstiili Taaskasutuse OÜ, with capital raised to €210,000 and Greenful Holding likewise excluded from the right to subscribe to new shares.
Andres Männiko, who sits on the management boards of Tekstiili Taaskasutuse OÜ, Greenful SIP OÜ and Greenful Sillamäe, told ERR he did not wish to comment on the matter. Kalle Grents, a board member of Tekstiili Taaskasutuse, was unavailable for comment on Monday.
Toomas Allikas told Äripäev that claims of partner dissatisfaction were mere gossip and not true. He said that overall, the Sillamäe project is in good shape: the EIS guarantee is active, the product is finalized and there is already strong customer interest.
According to Allikas, Finnish banks and several Central European banks have agreed to finance the project and funding is certainly not a concern.
Under the Just Transition Fund rules for Ida-Viru County, a single company may apply for a maximum of €13 million. However, Greenful's total support of €39 million stems from the fact that three separate companies are working together to create a full production chain focused on textile waste valorization.
Companies will only receive the grant funding once expenses have been incurred and approved. EIS's head of grants, Monica Hankov, confirmed to ERR that no disbursements have yet been made to the three projects in progress.
Hankov noted that, according to the regulation issued by the Minister of Economic Affairs and Industry, projects funded under the Just Transition Fund must be completed by August 31, 2029.
Back in January, company representatives said they aimed to start factory operations by the end of 2026 and expected to hire 150 employees.
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Editor: Karin Koppel, Marcus Turovski
