October 17 (SeeNews) - Albanian ferrochrome plant Burrel will be restarted after a pause of more than two years, the company operating the plant, DARFO Albania, said.
A consortium of Austrian-based trading company DCM DECOmetal and Russian firm Terwingo owns the Burrel concession which it bought earlier this year from DARFO Albania. The Austrian-Russian consortium also bought from DARFO Albania the concessions granted by the Albanian government on the Bulqize chrome mine and the ferrochrome plant at the Elbasan steelworks.
“A total of 106 workers will start working these days at the Burrel smelter, administered by DARFO Albania,” company spokesman Alban Bala told SeeNews.
DARFO Albania is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Italian company DARFO which was granted in 2001 a 35-year operating concession on the Burrel plant, the Bulqize mine, the plant in Elbasan and the Katjel and Pojske chrome mines. DARFO pledged to invest a combined $22 million (15.47 million euro) in the facilities it had been granted concessions on. However, the company has failed to keep the commitment and decided to sell the concessions to the Austrian-Russian consortium.
“The consortium subcontracted the Italian company Italkrom, which will complete a 10 million euro investment programme in Burrel by 2010,” Bala said.
In 1979, when the Burrel plant started operation it had three electric furnaces. One of them stopped operation in 1994 due to amortization. When DARFO Albania started operation in 2001 at the Burrel plant only one furnace was online. It worked until mid June 2005 when the plant halted operations, Bala said.
In the next two months two furnaces should become operational.
The new concessionaire will invest next year 4.5 million euro in the complete revamp of one furnace and the reconstruction of the existing office buildings. Some 3.3 million euro will be invested in the revamp of a second furnace. The rest of the planned investment will be spent by October 2010 on installing devices for emissions control in line with the EU standards, Bala said.
“A process of technical rehabilitation is also underway at the Bulqize mine, where the new owner has committed 4.5 million euro in order to restart mining as soon as possible. This has also been a request of the trade unions,” Bala said.
The Burrel plant is projected to process chrome ore coming mainly from the Bulqize mine but initially it can also operate with ore from other mines in Albania.
DARFO Albnania hopes to start mining at Bulqize by end of this month, initially producing 7,000 tonnes of chrome ore per month.
“Next year DARFO Albania will also restart the ferrochrome plant in Elbasan,” Bala said.
($=0.7036 euro)