VIZ Stal buys metallurgical plant’s 70.93% shareholding

VIZ Stal reports Duferco Group has agreed to sell a 70% shareholding of Verkh-Isetskiy Metallurgical Plant. However, the transaction is still subject to further negotiations and will probably have been finalized by the end of the year.

Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Rosprirodnadzor (the state environmental watchdog) carried out a scheduled inspection of VIZ Stal on March 17-31, 2008. The inspection was targeted at checking the enterprise’s compliance with the existing water code, the spokesperson for Rosprirodnadzor says. The inspection revealed that VIZ Stal was using the water from Verkh-Isetskiy water reservoir and was dumping manufacturing water in the River Iset without any permission to do so. Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Rosprirodnadzor therefore initiated an administrative lawsuit against the offender. The

OOO VIZ-Stal (part of NLMK Group) came up with a project on the technical upgrade of its waste water treatment facility. Upon the completion of the project, the plant will stop dumping waste water in the River Iset altogether. ‘The amount of waste water dumped by the plant at the moment actually fits within the maximum permissible discharge limits and comes to about 0.05% of the total amount of pollutants dumped in water bodies in Yekaterinburg. The plant currently recycles 95% of its water, whereas the average figure for the city’s industrial sites comes to only 65%. VIZ-Stal does not exceed

Rosnano now owns a 48% shareholding in Chelyabinsk Region-based Russian Quartz. Russian Quartz deals in the production of high-purity quartz concentrate. Prior to the acquisition of the shareholding, Rosnano and Kyshtym Mining (KGOK) signed an investment agreement relating to the expansion and technical upgrades of the high-purity quartz concentrate production; the concentrates are used in microelectronics, for example.

Austria-based VTB Bank AG bought a 10% shareholding in Serov Ferrous Alloys Plant (a member of Kazakhstan-based raw stuffs holding Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation (ENRC)), the plant reports. The bank did not use to have any stake in the plant before. ‘We believe it was ENRC who sold the shares to the bank, as about a month ago the holding informed us that they had sold a 10% shareholding in the plant,’ Interfax quotes a representative of the company as saying. It was reported that ENRC used to have a 78.5% stake in the plant, while OOO Industrial Metals held a 19.73% stake in the