BELGRADE (Serbia), May 16 (SeeNews) – Chinese steel producer Hesteel plans to make additional investment to upgrade its Serbian steel mill Zelezara Smederevo this year, Serbian prime minister Aleksandar Vucic has said.
Hesteel wants to meet the highest quality and environmental standards at Zelezara Smederevo, Vucic said in a video file posted on the website of Serbian news agency Tanjug on Tuesday.
Zelezara Smederevo has been operating with no loss since December, Vucic said during a visit to the steel mill of Hesteel in the northern Chinese province of Hebei.
In February, Hesteel said it planned to invest $120 million (108.6 million euro) in improving the functionality of Zelezara Smederevo's equipment and optimising its costs in 2017. Hesteel added it would aim to diversify the output of Zelezara Smederevo in response to customer demand, focusing on manufacturing quality products with added value, such as sheet metal and cold-rolled steel.
Hesteel officially took over the management and ownership of Zelezara Smederevo in July 2016. In April 2016, Serbia's government agreed to sell the steel mill to Hesteel, after the Chinese investor submitted a binding offer to buy all 98 property units of Zelezara Smederevo for a total of 46 million euro.
($ = 0.904514 euro)