October 7 (SeeNews) - United Bulgarian Bank (UBB), a member of Belgium's KBC Group, provided a 20 million euro ($23.5 million) investment loan to local lead and zinc producer KCM as part of financing for a capacity expansion project, local media reported on Wednesday.
KCM's project, worth a total of 130 million euro, envisages the construction of a new lead refining plant and a zinc electrolysis unit, business news outlet Capital.bg reported.
The loan agreement was signed last week.
At the end of last year, the European Investment Bank (EIB) agreed to provide a 65 million euro loan to KCM to finance the project that aims to replace outdated facilities.
The remainder will be contributed by two other commercial banks, with KCM expecting the overall structuring of financing to be completed by the end of October, Capital.bg quoted KCM executive director, Ivan Dobrev, as saying.
KCM expects to generate an annual revenue of over 1 billion levs ($601.5 million/511.3 million euro) after the competion of the project, with the company's production capacity forecast to increase to 200,000 tonnes per year from some 150,000 tonnes at present.
The project, part of KCM's technological upgrade programme for 2020-2023, will help the company raise its output by 25% and increase the recycling capacity for different types of secondary waste lead and zinc materials by 15 percentage points - to 35%. This is significantly above the 10-15% levels reported by other European primary smelters, the EIB noted last year.
KCM’s zinc is used in galvanised steel products, the production of die-cast alloys and of brass and bronze products, while its lead is primarily directed towards the automotive and industrial battery sectors.
Plovdiv-based KCM, part of local group KCM 2000, swung to a consolidated net profit of 5.5 million levs in 2019, from of consolidated net loss of 9.8 million levs in 2018. The company's operating revenue fell to 702.6 million levs last year from 744.1 million levs in 2018, according to its most recent annual financial statement published on the website of the commercial register.
($ = 0.850120 euro)
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