METALLURGICAL company Kremikovtsi’s general shareholder meeting, scheduled to take place on July 29, failed after majority shareholder Finmetals Holding did not send representatives.
Finmetals has a 71 per cent stake in Kremikovtsi, which is a leading steel manufacturing plant in the Balkan region.
The meeting was expected to formally announce the new owner of the company, since Indian Global Steel Holding, part of Ispat Industries, had been in negotiations with Finmetals for more than a year. One of the items on the agenda would have been the appointment of representatives of Global Steel Industries to the supervisory board of Kremikovtsi.
Ispat expects to close the deal for the acquisition of Kremikovtsi by mid-August, Pramod Mittal, Ispat co-owner, told SEE News on July 28. He said that talks were moving fast and there was progress.
Finmetals first announced in April that it had signed a preliminary agreement to be acquired by Global Steel within 60 days. But the deal has not yet been concluded.
In April, industry analysts said Ispat would pay as much as $160 million for Finmetals, which would be an addition to the $300 million that Ispat had previously pledged to invest in the plant.
Kremikovtsi, located in the outskirts of Sofia, launched on July 28 a 300 million leva continuous steel casting operation as part of its modernisation programme. The plant will gradually switch all its casting business to the new plant, which will allow it to cut costs by up to 12 per cent annually.
The new operation will soak up a total investment of 320 million leva, of which 300 million leva have already been invested, plant executive director Valentin Zahariev said.
The new installation will improve production quality and cut operating expenses by 60 per cent. In addition, it will reduce carbon dioxide, nitrogen and sulphuric acid emissions.
Outgoing Finance Minister Milen Velchev and Steno Marcegaglia, one of Kremikovtsi’s key partners whose steel conglomerate Gruppo Marcegaglia buys around 360 000 tons of the plant’s output every year, congratulated the management and the employees on the opening of the new operation.