Former Almaty maslikhat deputy Igor Protsenko has announced his readiness to sell his stake in his furniture company Tornado PLUS. The enterprise has been operating on the market since 1994, but has recently faced serious sales difficulties, reports infohub.kz.
In his Facebook account, the businessman said that for the first time in the company's history, they failed to repay a bank loan on time. According to him, the bank is ready to restructure the debt, but the main problem is the lack of orders.
"Last year we finished very well. We shifted the focus from the corporate sector to retail, volumes grew almost three times, and the company's staff reached 146 people. Since the new year, sales in the retail network we worked with have collapsed. Together with them, we collapsed," Protsenko said.
As early as April, the businessman announced his intention to sell a 100% stake in Tornado PLUS. He is now considering several options. One of them is selling the production base, including a workshop of 4,500 square meters, to close loans. However, in this case, according to him, the issue of equipment worth about 700 million tenge will remain unresolved, and to resume work in the future, the workshop will have to be rented.
The businessman is more inclined to find new partners and sell them a share of the business. Together with a new partner, Protsenko wants to modernize the company and develop a new direction – rental of production facilities. He owns his own production base with an area of 1 hectare.
"We want to gradually transform the existing production complex into a small industrial park. We already have the corresponding status. Production is preserved and becomes the anchor business of the complex. But in parallel, we are starting to shift the focus towards a more stable and predictable direction – rental of production, warehouse, and office premises. Today we have about 4,500 square meters of such space. There is a ready project for the construction of about 3,200 more square meters," Igor Protsenko said.
If the plans are implemented, the entrepreneur intends to increase the capitalization of the entire asset by 2.5–3 times over several years.
It should be noted that for three years, the founder of the furniture company Tornado PLUS was a deputy of the Almaty maslikhat. He was a member of various industry and regional organizations for entrepreneurship development. In May 2026, he voluntarily resigned as a deputy of the maslikhat.
Earlier it was reported that a deputy from the Karaganda region will produce irrigation systems from the USA.