The Russian mining and steel producing company Mechel has announced that Russia's biggest lender Sberbank has opened a credit line totaling Ruble 15 billion (about $499 million) for its subsidiary Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant.
Accordingly, the credit facilities provided will have a five-year maturity and a three-year grace period and will be used to refinance the short-term debt.
"We achieved a significant improvement in the maturity profile of our debt in September 2010 when we placed Ruble 10 billion of five-year bonds in two tranches and refinanced $2 billion of the syndicated credit facility with international banks...With the new credit line we will optimize the structure of our debt portfolio further, which will help us to continue working on our main task - financing the growth of our business," Mechel's CFO Stanislav Ploshchenko commented.