Stone wool producer lost assets in Russia / Photo: RVillalon / Shutterstock.com
Shares of the Danish industrial company Rockwool, the world's largest producer of stone wool insulation for buildings and infrastructure, collapsed at trading in Copenhagen by 7.7% - to 205 Danish kroner (about $35.7). During trading on January 13, quotations fell even by 10%, which was the sharpest one-day decline for them since August 20, Bloomberg writes.
Investors reacted negatively to news from Russia: President Vladimir Putin ordered the introduction of a temporary administration to manage the Danish company's Russian assets. Rockwool A/S's stakes in Rockwool and Rockwool-Volga have been transferred to JSC Development of Construction Assets, Kommersant reported, citing documents published on a government portal. The decrees were signed on December 31, 2025, but have been made public only now.
Rockwool has been operating in Russia since 1995, running plants in Moscow, Leningrad, Chelyabinsk regions and Tatarstan. The revenue of the local business in 2024 increased by 26% to 31.56 billion rubles (about $350 million), net profit more than doubled to 9.32 billion rubles, the newspaper notes. The most probable scenario is the subsequent sale of these assets to Russian companies, the newspaper suggests. Investment banker Ilya Shumov estimated the value of Rockwool's business in the country at 50-60 billion rubles ($558 million-$670 million).
Rockwool has been repeatedly criticized for its refusal to leave the Russian market, as many other European companies did after the conflict with Ukraine began, Bloomberg points out. The Danish company responded that leaving would actually mean "giving the business to Putin," the agency recalls.
Rockwool told Bloomberg that it was not yet ready to comment on the incident and added that it was conducting an inspection.
This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor
