| In the ranking of the tender for the right to long-term management of Azerbaijan Aluminum JSC, the Ministry of State Property of Azerbaijan assigned the Russian Aluminum company the fourth line - out of four possible in the list of applicants. The winner of the tender was the little-known Dutch company Fondel Metal Participations BV, which offered a fantastic sum for the dying aluminum complex of the former Soviet republic - $1 billion.
The British-Tajik company Ansol, which offered $100 million for Azeral, and the British Aluminum Development Ltd. also took part in the tender. ($362.5 million). Russian Aluminum was ready to pay the most realistic price, according to its experts, $124 million, but the terms of investment proposed by this company were considered by members of the tender commission to be less profitable than those of Ansol.
Let us recall that the state-owned Azerbaijan Aluminum JSC was constructed by Azerbaijani specialists by combining the Sumgaitsvetsmetall primary aluminum production plant, the Ganja Alumina Production Association, the Dashkesan Mining Plant and the Zeylik Mining Department. According to Rusal specialists, who have studied the production capabilities of Azeral for at least a year, it is impossible to achieve a closed production cycle on the basis of these enterprises - the import of bauxite is inevitable. In addition, according to the terms of the competition, the winner was asked to present a project for the technology of producing alumina from alunite ore, the development of which in itself costs a lot of money. In total, MHI of Azerbaijan expected to receive about $350 million for the “stagnant goods.”
Fondel Metal Participations BV offered almost three times more. And within a month it will have to conclude an agreement for the long-term management of the joint-stock company. Otherwise, her victory in the tender will be declared “failed.” Meanwhile, according to the head of the Dutch company, Austin van't Wout, it is not yet known whether she will “lead the project.” Rusal considers such strange revelations from the tender winners to be evidence that the organizers of the competition simply staged some kind of show, the purpose of which was to attract promising investors. An indirect proof of this can be the rather uncertain position of the Azerbaijani government on the issue of further privatization of Azeral.
No one is going to privatize the aluminum holding in the foreseeable future. High profits are also not expected from it in the coming years. This means that there are few people willing to invest in it. Therefore, the head of its press service, Vladislav Vershinin, considers the defeat in the Russian Aluminum tender “as a victory” - in the sense of a real assessment of the investment attractiveness of Azeral. Alexander KRIVTSOV
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