Chrome ACR To Launch 30 Mln EUR Investment Project in June

TIRANA, May 23؍ining company Albanian Chrome ACR said it will launch a 30 million EUR investment project in June aimed at boosting the output of its main ferrochrome mine in Bulqize.
“This investment aims to increase the depth of the mine’s 7th shaft and to extend the production life of the Bulqize mine by 20 years,” ACR CEO Elton Beqi said in a statement.
After the upgrade, the mine’s output is expected to increase to15,000 tons of chromium ore per month, from the current 6,500 tons, the statement said.
A Russian-based company will implement the project, expected to take four years to complete, Beqi said in the statement.
ACR’s mining operations in Bulqize produce half of Albania’s annual chromium output.
Albania was the world’s third-largest producer of chromium, mainly from Bulqize, before the collapse of communism in the early 1990’s. The Bulqize massif contains over 350 chromium deposits and is widely recognized as one of the largest chromium deposits in the world with past production of about 20 million tons per year.
ACR is a consortium made up of the Austrian-based trading company DCM DECOmetal and the Russian firm Terwingo. ACR bought the concessions to the Elbasan and Burrel ferrochrome plants, in northern Albania, and to the Bulqize ferrochrome mine from Darfo Albania in 2007. Darfo Albania, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Italian copper smelter Darfo, was granted a 35-year operating concession to the Burrel plant, the Bulqize mine, the plant in Elbasan and the Katjel and Pojske chromium mines in 2001.
Since taking over the operation of Darfo’s assets in Albania, ACR has invested some 10 million euro in the overhaul of the three furnaces at the Elbasan plant.