November 15 (SeeNews) - Austrian steel producer voestalpine Group is considering building a steel plant with installed capacity of up to five million tonnes of crude stell a year in the Black Sea region to meet rising demand in Central and southeast Europe, a company official said on Thursday.
"It is a sort of pre-project. This means that we evaluate the Black Sea area and the countries around the Black Sea for a possible second steel plant location," voestalpine spokesman Gerhard Kuerner told SeeNews.
The group has a steelmaking plant in Linz, Austria, in which it has invested around 3.0 billion euro. The plant has an annual capacity of five million tonnes of crude steel and it will open a new production line next year, Kuerner said. He added that the plant could not be further expanded as it operated on the limits of logistics and free space.
Kuerner said the investment in the future plant could reach billions of euro but did not elaborate.
"At this moment we don't have one single country in our focus because we are starting right now to evaluate. We will do this pre-project till mid next year and within next year we may know in which area, in which countries we will go closer," Kuerner said and added that the logistics, available land and taxes will be among the main criteria for choosing the construction site.
If the group makes the decision on the investment next year, production could start in late 2012 or in early 2013.
The Black Sea countries are European Union newcomers Bulgaria and Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia and Turkey.
voestalpine Group (www.voestalpine.com) has production and sales locations in 60 countries.