Russian mining and steel company Evraz has reached an agreement to sell its wholly-owned subsidiary Evraz Stratcor Inc., based in Arkansas, to a third party in July 2019, TASS reported citing the company’s 1H financial report released on Thursday.
“The group expects that the sale of this subsidiary will not have a significant impact on the consolidated financial statements,” Evraz said.
Stratcor produces up to 12 million pounds of vanadium oxide per year. Part of produced oxide is converted into vanadium-aluminum used in jet aircraft and other aerospace applications. Moreover, vanadium oxide is converted into many specialty products for the production of chemicals, petrochemicals, gases, and storage batteries.
Evraz bought a major interest in the company — around 73% — in 2006 for $110 million. Following the transaction to sell the U.S.-based asset, the Russian giant will have two more vanadium facilities — Evraz Vanady Tula, the largest European producer of vanadium pentoxide, and Evraz Nikom in the Czech Republic.
Evraz is one of the world’s major vertically integrated steel and mining companies with assets in Russia, the U.S., Canada, the Czech Republic, Italy, and Kazakhstan. In 2018, its output stood at 13.02 million tons of steel.
Also on Thursday, Evraz’s Chief Executive Officer Alexander Frolov told reporters that the company considered the acquisition of British Steel’s rail factory in France, but abandoned the idea.
“As for the rail factory, indeed we considered the asset, but did not find it interesting for us,” he said, adding that the asset would suggest “quite considerable transport costs.”
