June 24 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria-based soda ash producer Solvay Sodi said that its shareholders approved the management's proposal to distribute a gross dividend of 17.49 levs per share for 2021, or the company's entire net profit of 111 million levs ($59.8 million/56.8 million euro) reported for last year.
The go-ahead was given at a general meeting on June 22, with the distribution to shareholders to start on July 23, Solvay Sodi, a unit of Belgium-based chemical company Solvay, said in a press release on Wednesday.
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Last year, Solvay Sodi shareholders approved the distribution of a dividend of 14.77 levs for 2020, or the entire profit for the year in the amount of 93.8 million levs.
Earlier in June, Solvay Sodi formally inaugurated its upgraded plant in Devnya, northeastern Bulgaria, which increases the annual capacity for production of sodium bicarbonate – a derivative of soda ash – by 200,000 tonnes.
"The new facility responds to the growing global demand for sodium bicarbonate, an essential product used for removing pollutants from the flue gas in industrial applications and as an additive in animal feed, among many other applications," the parent company said in a statement at the time.
Since February 2022, the company has also been investing in a biomass co-firing project at the plant, with a target of reducing by one-fifth the carbon dioxide emissions related to energy production at what is Europe's largest soda ash plant.
Solvay Sodi is indirectly owned at 75% by Solvay, with the balance of 25% held by Turkish group Sisecam. The Bulgarian unit employs some 570 staff in four locations in the country, including two plants and produces soda ash, baking soda and calcium chloride.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)