The Russian steelmaker Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works (MMK) has announced that its 51 percent-owned Chelyabinsk region-based ore mining company Bakalskoye Rudoupravleniye (BRU) is continuing its Ruble 2 billion ($73million) expansion program, adopted in 2007 for a five-year period.
Within the framework of the program, BRU is to rehabilitate its Petlinsk open pit, where the ore contains 45 percent Fe, as well as its Novo-Bakalsk open pit. As a result, over the next ten years BRU is expected to increase the Novo-Bakalsk capacity by an additional seven million mt of high grade ore.
Moreover, BRU is to invest in the reconstruction and acquisition of new equipment for its Sideritovaya mine, in order to reach within five years its full annual capacity of 2.5 million mt of iron carbonate.
The program also includes the reconstruction of BRU's concentrating plant, which will allow the company to process about three million mt of ore per year by 2012, and annually to supply about 1.8 million of concentrate.
Currently, BRU has implemented 20 percent of its program, with the amount of investments made by the company for the acquisition of new equipment in the current year totaling Ruble 129 million ($4.7 million).
In 2007 MMK purchased a 51 percent stake in BRU, as a part of its strategy to create its own raw material base.