Former director of Electrozinc may head CZP

UMMC began the operational management of Chelyabinsk Zinc Plant OJSC (ChZP), the purchase of which from the ChTPZ holding group and the Russian Copper Company (RMK) was closed on September 29. As Kommersant learned, Andrey Panshin, ex-director of Electrozinc OJSC (Vladikavkaz, part of UMMC), has been appointed acting general director.

As Kommersant learned, on October 13, at an extraordinary meeting of shareholders of the Chelyabinsk Zinc Plant, the board of directors of the enterprise will be re-elected, which will appoint a new general director. Kommersant's sources familiar with the situation at the enterprise claim that the main contender for this post is Andrey Panshin, who until October 1, 2009 held the post of general director of Electrozinc OJSC. Assistant to the General Director of Electrozinc OJSC Sergei Golomzik said that Mr. Panshin officially left the company on October 1. The press service of CZP confirmed that Mr. Panshin is already working at the company as deputy general director, and is currently acting as the head of the company, since the current director is Alexander Zatonsky (a native of CTPZ, who replaced Vsevolod Geykhman in this post after the announcement of the sale of CZP ) is on vacation.

Experts consider the appointment of Mr. Panshin as the general director of Chelyabinsk Zinc Plant to be a logical step towards establishing actual control over the Chelyabinsk Zinc Plant by UMMC. Let us remind you that on September 29, UMMC closed a deal to purchase 100% of the Dutch NF Holdings BV, which owns 57.83% of CZP. Formally, Igor Altushkin’s Russian Copper Company also participated in the deal. The companies do not disclose the current shareholder structure of CZP. It is known that 40% of the shares of the zinc plant are free-float, while RMK has less than a blocking stake. Thus, RMK’s participation in the transaction was formal, so all key positions in management will be occupied by representatives of the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company, experts believe. Yesterday, UMMC was unable to promptly comment on personnel changes at the zinc plant. Kommersant's source in RMK reported that the company will not apply for participation in operational management. “Panshin’s candidacy has been agreed upon with the leadership of RMK. The company’s board of directors will probably include 1-2 people,” Kommersant’s interlocutor clarified.

At Electrozinc, Mr. Panshin is described as a fairly strong specialist in the manufacturing sector - he reconstructed the electrolysis production at the plant. “He solved a whole range of technical problems,” says Murat Darchiev, director of general issues and personnel at Elektrozinc. “But CZP is not currently facing technical problems,” says Oleg Petropavlovsky, an analyst at Brokercreditservice Investment Company. “The main task that management will have to solve is obtaining cheap raw materials and developing optimal logistics schemes to reduce costs.” According to him, the current zinc price environment allows the company to operate with an operating profit: on October 6, zinc was trading at $1,896 thousand per ton, while the cost of zinc at CZP is about $1 thousand per ton. “But zinc prices are not stable, and we will still have to work to reduce costs,” the analyst notes.

Sergey Antonov

UMMC does not accept strangers