The Ukrainian cabinet of ministers has announced an initiative to privatize the country's unfinished Soviet-era Krivoy Rog Mining and Processing Works of Oxidized Ore (KGOKOR) and has assigned the Ministry of Industrial Policy to prepare a draft normative act on the abolition of the ban on the plant's privatization.
In addition, the ministry is also to prepare a program to attract an effective investor for KGOKOR in order to complete its construction and to commission its operations.
As local media recently reported, the companies most interested in the privatization of KGOKOR, which will enable the processing of oxidized ores, are ArcelorMittal, the world's largest integrated metals and mining group, and Smart Group, owned by Russian businessman Vadim Novinsky. The production capacity of KGOKOR is planned at 10 million mt of pellets per year.
As previously reported by SteelOrbis, the construction of KGOKOR started in 1985 during Soviet times, with the main shareholders of the enterprise including Ukraine (56.4 percent), Romania (28 percent) and Slovakia (15.6 percent). In the early 1990s the plant's construction was frozen. Of the $2.4 billion designated for the construction of the plant, about $1.65 billion was invested.
Currently, KGOKOR is about 70 percent completed and requires about $800 million in investments to finish construction and start operations.