Evraz acquires two coal assets

Evraz Group announced later last week that OJSC Raspadskaya, owned by Evraz's joint venture Corber Enterprises Limited, has agreed to acquire two additional coal mining assets, Mezhdurechenskaya Coal Company-96 and Razrez Raspadskiy. According to the agreement, Evraz's partner in Corber Enterprises will transfer two assets into ownership of Evraz, which in order to retain its 50 percent stake in Corber is obligated to provide approximately $225 million in cash as well as to secure $300 million as a short-term financial guarantee for OJSC Raspadskaya. The newly acquired assets are rapidly growing coal mining companies. The explored resources under Russian classifications are estimated to have approximately 293 million tons of coking coal. The companies are planning to increase their production up to 6 million tons per annum by 2010 from 3.3 million tons produced last year. ’The new investment into Raspadskaya is part of our strategy of expanding our coal mining assets base through high-quality profitable acquisitions', commented Valery Khoroshkovsky, Evraz's CEO.