The board of directors of Eurasian Natural
Resources Corporation (ENRC) has decided not to buy
Kazakhstan’s copper giant, Kazakhmys.
Kazakhmys rejected ENRC’s preliminary
offer, saying the bid was low.
ENRC offered to take over Kazakhmys for £7.1bn,
which is less than the copper corporation’s current market value.
This is not the first company the metal
corporation wanted to acquire: in recent months, it has consolidated its market
positions by buying stakes in
Russia’s
Serov Ferroalloys Plant,
Brazil’s
Bahia Mineracao Limitada and
China’s
Xinjiang Tuoli Taihang Ferroalloy Company.
Even before these acquisitions, the
corporation increased its production figures. Its output of ferroalloys went up
by 2.5% to 374,000 tonnes in the first quarter of 2008, including 293,000
high-carbon ferrochrome (3% up).
It produced 182,000 tonnes of manganese
concentrate (a 13.8% rise), 1.19m tonnes of chromium ore (up by 0.8%), 10.14m
tonnes of iron ore (7.6% up), 1.28m tonnes of bauxites (a 6.9% increase) and
398,000 tonnes of alumina (up by 5.9%).
ENRC’s production of aluminium, which it
launched this year, totalled 16,000 tonnes. The corporation also increased its
coal output by 12.4% to 5.7m tonnes in January-March 2008.
The corporation said it would invest $1.7bn
in reconstructing its power stations, building an electrolysis plant and
developing ferroalloys and alumina plants in 2008. It intends to invest a total
of $3.8bn until 2011.
