Gunvor Group Ltd. said Monday it has restarted the former Petroplus refinery in Ingolstadt , Germany , and the first crude cargo has already been discharged to supply the facility.

Earlier this year, Cyprus-based Gunvor, one of the world's largest independent traders of commodities, bought the Ingolstadt plant and the Antwerp refinery in Belgium .

They were previously owned by Petroplus Holdings AG, once Europe 's largest independent refiner that lost access to all its credit lines and then filed for insolvency in January.

The refining business in Germany will be named Gunvor Raffinerie Ingolstadt GmbH and will retain all of their more than 400 workers, Gunvor said in a statement.

Petroplus's refinery in Switzerland has been sold to oil trader Vitol Group and investment company AtlasInvest; the Coryton plant in the U.K. is set to become a terminal, while the longer-term future of Petroplus's Petit-Couronne refinery in France remains unclear.

Refining profit margins have been strong in Europe this summer. Their weakness due to high crude prices and falling demand for gasoline in Europe was one of the key reasons of Petroplus's downfall.

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