Yildirim Group will reduce spot sales of high-carbon ferro-chrome produced at the Tikhvin ferro-alloy plant in Russia and will also cut sales to third-party traders, a company official told Metal Bulletin on Wednesday September 4.
Yildirim confirmed in August that it had agreed to buy the Tikhvin plant and the Voskhod mining plant from Russian mining and metallurgical group Mechel for $425 million.
Some of the material produced at Tikhvin will be sold under Yildirim’s existing long-term contracts and the company will continue to secure new contracts, according to Cengiz Onal, marketing director of the Turkish industrial group’s Eti Krom subsidiary.
“We will reduce sales of Russian material to third-party traders,” Onal told Metal Bulletin on the sidelines of Metal Bulletin’s 12th International Stainless and Special Steel Summit in London.
“Tikhvin material in the hands of traders is decreasing. Steel mills will get the same material but they will have to negotiate the price with the new owners, not traders,” he said.
All Tikhvin material was sold on a spot basis under the previous ownership.
The plant normally produces 90,000-100,000 tpy ferro-chrome. Traditionally, about 25% of the output was sold in former Soviet Union countries. The remaining 75% was sold to Europe, the USA, Japan and India.
The company will not stop spot sales or sales to traders entirely; there will be circumstances in which such sales are appropriate, Onal said.
“We don’t need traders to sell our material but we will look at sales on a case-by-case basis,” he added.
The Voskhod mine is in Kazakhstan’s Khromtau region and the Tikhvin plant is in the Leningrad region of Russia.
The Tikhvin plant consumes half the capacity of the Voskhod mine and has capacity for 120,000 tpy of high-carbon ferro-chrome, with 69.5% chrome content.
Janie Davies
jdavies@metalbulletin.com
Twitter: @janiedavies_mb