The Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovich, and Rinat Akhmetov, the President of SCM, Metinvest’s major shareholder, participated in the contract signature ceremony. The contract was signed by Metinvest’s CEO, Igor Syry and the vice president of Siemens VAI, Christoph Aichinger.
“It has been a great effort undertaken during the recent years," Yanukovich said. "The enterprise was not only preserved, but also modernized significantly. I am very grateful to the owners, Mr Akhmetov personally, for the real investments that are being made to resolve this issue.”
Metinvest says that the new sinter plant will meet the most modern environmental and technological standards in the world. Siemens VAI has already build many advanced sinter plants globally .
“I officially state that [the]’s sinter plant concept is the best available technology in the world," said Christoph Aichinger, Siemens VAI vice president. "It is state-of-the-art process and [...] will become the benchmark both for Ukraine and for the CIS in terms of sinter quality, productivity and ecology."
The contract with Siemens VAI represents the final stage of preparations for the construction of the new sinter plant. In the beginning, the project cost was estimated at US$250 million. In the course of preparations, Metinvest decided to invest another US$110 million to install a modern and reliable gas cleaning system.
Since the project inception, Metinvest has invested around US$18.6 million. The next project steps involve obtaining the approval of Ukrainian environmental authorities and the construction permit. Construction will commence in Q2 2014, and the sinter plant will be commissioned in the end of 2016. The new sinter plant will allow doubling sinter output, while inter process emissions will decrease by ten.
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