About €30 million are planned to be invested in the construction of a new electrometallurgical mini-mill in Lithuania by the financial group Taurus Capital, Russian company TESO Engineering and Luxembourg-registered SSP Company Limited, the pan-Baltic news agency Baltic News Service (BNS) has reported, citing TESO Engineering's representative in the Baltic countries, Gintautas Ramanauskas.
Accordingly, the location of the new mini-mill in Lithuania is to be chosen in February 2010, while the construction works are planned to be started by mid-2010.
"With a small output, we have an idea to create such technology which will allow our production costs to compete with that of the big producers," Mr. Ramanauskas said. The products of the new mill will be sold on the domestic market.
According to Mr. Ramanauskas, in addition to the Lithuanian mill, five new mini-mills are also planned to be constructed in Russia.
As SteelOrbis previous reported, TESO Engineering has already started the implementation of one project for the construction of a new electrometallurgical plant for production of long steel products (rebar, hardware, mesh) in the town of Surovikino in Russia's Volgograd region, with an annual capacity of 120,000 mt of finished products per year. The construction of the new plant is scheduled to start in 2010, while the investments in the project will amount to Ruble 1 billion (about $34.56 million).
Currently, one of the biggest steelmakers in Lithuania is the hardware enterprise Mechel Nemunas, owned by Russian mining and steel group Mechel.