Vanadium plant in the Czech Republic left the Evraz group
Moscow. June 3. INTERFAX.RU – The Czech asset for the production of ferrovanadium Czech Vanadium (former Evraz Nikom) left the Evraz group.
“We left the Evraz group in February 2024, our new sole shareholder is Metco Ltd,” the company’s website says.
Evraz declined to comment.
According to the Czech portal Kurzy.cz, Metco Ltd is registered on Al Maryah Island (Al Sarab Tower) in Abu Dhabi, UAE. The change of ownership of Czech Vanadium was registered on March 11, 2024.
According to 2021 data, Evraz accounted for about 15% of the global vanadium market. The company’s vanadium business is integrated into the group’s steel segment: the main source of vanadium is titanium-magnesium ores from the Kachkanarsky GOK, whose products are used by the Nizhny Tagil plant, and the vanadium slag generated there is supplied to Evraz’s vanadium assets.
In the Czech Republic, the group had capacities for producing ferrovanadium from oxides. As Alexander Erenburg, head of the Vanadium division, said in an interview with Interfax in the fall of 2021, Evraz’s capacities in Tula (Evraz Vanady Tula) do not cover the processing of the entire volume of oxide.
“This is a stable chain, the Czech asset worked with the Tula site even before Evraz bought it,” he said. According to him, the Evraz group annually produced and sold about 14-15 thousand tons in terms of pure vanadium.
The plant in the Czech Republic was acquired by Evraz in 2008 for $43 million, it is located 30 km from Prague, in the town of Mnisek pod Brdy.
According to the Czech company’s financial statements for 2022, Evraz Nikom produced 4.5 thousand tons of vanadium, which is 19% less than in 2021 and 14.7% below the initially established annual production plan for 2022. As a by-product, 11 thousand tons of vanadium slag were produced. The year ended with a loss, which was not disclosed in the document.
The company explained the deterioration in production indicators by a decrease in demand for ferrovanadium as a result of high energy prices and the associated partial or complete shutdown of steelmaking capacities around the world. The impact of economic sanctions imposed on the Russian Federation was also a negative factor.
Since mid-2022, after Evraz Plc was included in the sanctions lists, Evraz Nikom has switched to direct sales of ferrovanadium to end consumers or specialized commodity traders.
Evraz is one of the largest Russian vertically integrated holdings. The largest shareholder is Roman Abramovich (28.6%, under sanctions since spring 2022)