Chinese company buys stake in Russia’s Amurmetall plant

KHABAROVSK, Feb 8 (PRIME) – The Torex group of companies, the owner of the only steel producer in Russia’s Far East Amurmetall, has agreed to sell an unspecified stake in the plant to Hong Kong company Debang Guangdong International, Pavel Balsky, chairman of Torex board of directors, said in a news conference on Thursday.

“Our Chinese partners and we have reached an agreement, under which they will buy a stake in our company, enter our shareholder capital, and undertake obligations to attract a large amount of cheap long-term money. They will bring new technologies to us, and we plan to raise the plant’s steel production capacity to 5–10 million tonnes a year in the next five to 10 years,” Balsky said.

In January, the two companies signed a letter of intent to create a metals cluster basing on capacities of Amurmetall. Yao Xiaodong, chairman of Debang Guangdong, said that that a 10-year plan of the consortium include output of 30 million tonnes of metals products per year and establishment of a production and sales chain that will comprise production of raw materials, constant operation of smelters, production of finished products and export sales.

Balsky said that the sale of the stake to the Chinese company will not affect domestic supplies of the plant. “The Chinese plan to produce high-added value products and export them to their traditional markets of Southeast Asia. We will continue working for the internal market as we did before,” he said.

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