‘In the short run, things will probably stay more or less the same in the iron-and-steel industry, but a new large player will eventually emerge on the market after all. This player can already boast a great resource base. As for Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company, its options of building up on their resource base will grow limited, since resources do tend to get used up,’ Unicom Partner Investment and Finance Company’s Deputy GD Dmitriy Zemerov said to an UrBC reporter.

Rosnedra (the state subsoil resources watchdog) declared Mikhailovskiy Ore Mining and Processing Enterprise (part of Metalloinvest Holding) the winner of a tender related to development of Russia’s largest Udokanskiy copper deposit in the north of Zabaikalskiy Territory. Mikhailovskiy competed with Russian Copper Consortium (Russian Railway Public Company, Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company, and Bank Razvitiya).

‘I feel that without the right to develop Udokanskiy deposit, UMMC will end up having to focus on its non-core assets like the iron-and-steel industry, agriculture, and real estate,’ Zemerov said.

Dmitriy Zemerov reports a deposit takes fifteen to twenty years to pay off, as a lot of time is needed to create infrastructure from scratch.