July 30, 2013. OboronGeoGroup, a company set up to develop the resource base of Russian Chrome 1915, is now applying for insolvency, Kommersant refers to Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court as reporting.

The enterprise was set up to develop Zhizhinskoye-Sharomskoye chromium deposit, but the project was frozen due to its economic inexpediency. OboronGeoGroup produced and sold 13,000 tons of ore, but all the jobs were stopped in late 2012 when it turned out that the actual amount of chromium in the deposit was less than expected,’ RosSpetsSplav’s press center explained. The chromium content in the raw stuffs was under 10%.

Now the industrial production of chromium at the deposit began in 2011. RosSpetsSplav had planned to invest $6bn in the ore deposit, and its projected capacity was to have come to 18,000 tons of concentrate and 60,000 tons of ore a year. This produce was to have been directed to Russian Chrome 1915 (a member enterprise of RosSpetsSplav). The deposit was supposed to have decreased the company’s dependence on the foreign supplies of raw materials from Kazakhstan and Turkey. Bilimbayevskoye Ore Enterprise was expected to have been turned into an ore mining and processing enterprise for processing ore (the cost of the project was estimated at some 40m RUR).