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Kazchrome to launch chrome pellet plant in 2009
Reuters
Kazchrome, the world's third-largest ferro-chrome producer, is spending $111 million to build a new plant to produce 700,000 tonnes a year of chrome ore pellets, its parent company said on Tuesday.
The launch of the plant is planned for the second quarter of 2009," Eurasian Natural Resources Corp said in a statement.
Finnish mining equipment maker Outotec will also participate in the project and supply the technology, ENRC said.
Kazchrome is the world's single largest chrome ore miner and already operates a 600,000-tonne-per-year pellet plant in the town of Khromtau in the northwestern Kazakh region of Aktobe.
The new plant, which is expected to be running at full capacity by the end of 2009, will supply most of its pellets to Kazchrome's ferro-alloy smelters in Aksu and Aktobe.
Kazchrome posted a net profit of $266 million in 2006. Annual production of ferro-chrome, used to make stainless and special steels, is more than 1 million tonnes.
The company is one of the main assets of ENRC, a mining and metals group that accounts for about 5 percent of Kazakhstan's gross domestic product and has annual sales of over $3 billion.
The group also controls Aluminium of Kazakhstan, Zhairem GOK and the Sokolov-Sarbai Mining and Production Union, the main supplier of iron ore to Russia's Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works.
Shareholders in ENRC include the Kazakh government and copper miner Kazakhmys Plc.