EuroChem Group AG, Zug, Switzerland, said Russia’s VEB.RF and Sberbank and partner banks have opened the financing for the EuroChem-North-West-2 ammonia and urea project in Kingisepp, northwest Russia, according to a June 3 statement by EuroChem.
VEB.RF and Sberbank, which are partnering with Otkritie Financial Corporation Bank, VTB and Gazprombank are providing the project with a syndicated loan of RUB99 billion (approximately $1.37 billion at current exchange rates). The financing was approved back in December last year, and also includes an additional optional tranche to be provided by VEB.RF to cover interest and any increase in the project budget, according to EuroChem (GM Dec. 31, 2020).
The first tranche of the loan – around RUB27 billion – will be released shortly to the project, Eurochem said. Construction of EuroChem-North-West-2 is underway, and according to this latest statement, production is scheduled to start in 2024. EuroChem in December had said the project would be launched in 2023.
About 8,000 people will be engaged in the project at its most active stage.
North-West-2 will have a capacity of 1.1 million mt/y of ammonia and 1.4 million mt/y of urea per year, and is the second stage of industrial development at the EuroChem site. The first stage comprised a 1 million mt/y ammonia plant that started up in early June 2019 (GM June 7, 2019).
In a separate development, EuroChem reported late last week that it had signed a cooperation agreement with the government of Russia’s Tula region to cooperate on investment projects for the refurbishment of ammonia and urea units at the Russian fertilizer group’s Novomoskovsk Azot and Novomoskovskiy Chlor subsidiaries’ production sites in the Tula region, as well as the construction of a new liquid carbon dioxide plant.
EuroChem is investing about RUB17 billion in the projects, which it said is aimed at extending the life of the ammonia and urea production units and increasing productivity as well to improve the operations’ operational performance.