The Industrial-Financial Company “Prometey” is developing a project to build a scrap processing plant in Dzhankoy, Crimea, already this year, the company told the LED Monitor on Thursday.
The head of the Prometey Crimea Scrap Procurement and Processing Complex, Oleksiy Malyna, said the construction is expected to start between mid July and early August and finish in November with installation of press shears. He added, however, that actual operations will begin somewhat earlier, since the press shears will need a reserve of scrap.
Mr. Malyna said the complex will employ 150 to 200 persons, and there will be two-month personnel training in Germany, where the company is buying the press shears, followed by one-month on-the-job training in Dzhankoy conducted by representatives from the machine manufacturer.
He declined answering a question on the investment size, just saying that it is "a lot of money". "I wouldn't like to specify the figure but the amount is big. Just the press shears alone cost €1.5 million," he said.
The officer called the future plant a "scrap processing complex made to European standards." He said the press shears will be able to process up to 6,000 tonnes of scrap a month as against 200-300 tones that would be a maximum for a scrap processing company using a flame cutting method.
According to Mr. Malyna, the complex will buy scrap from enterprises located in Crimea. Processed scrap will be supplied to iron and still works of Mariupol (Azovstal), Yenakiyevo, and Makiyivka.
The plant will be erected on a three-hectare plot, which is a mix of greenfield and brownfield. Mr. Malyna reported that another city Prometey considered when selecting a site for plant location was Simferopol, the Crimean capital. He mentioned three factors that favored Dzhankoy. First, he said the city is a strategic node in Crimea and a large railroad junction. Second, having the plant is Dzhankoy eliminates counterflow of materials, which would be the case for scrap originating in northern Crimea in the event the plant were constructed in Simferopol. And third, as Mr. Malyna put it, "the economic microclimate in Dzhankoy is better."
The Industrial-Financial Company “Prometey” was established in 1997. The company is "one of the most influential operators on the domestic ferrous scrap market of Ukraine and the largest supplier of steel scrap for steelmaking companies," according to the web site of Metinvest Group, to which Prometey is affiliated and which is part of the System Capital Management (SCM) group.
Dzhankoy is a city of about 38,000 residents in the northern Crimean Peninsula. In February 2006, the city adopted an Economic Development Strategic Plan, which had been drafted with assistance from the USAID LED project. The strategy's goals include among other things "creation of favorable conditions for attraction of foreign and domestic investments" and "development of advantages of the city as a transport function."
