August 22, 2008

ShalkiyaZinc to raise finance to fund expansion plans

The St Petersburg Times recently reported that ShalkiyaZinc, owner of Kazakhstan’s largest zinc deposit, is expected to arrange up to USD 150 million in debt finance from Barclays Capital to fund expansion of a mine and construction of an ore processing plant.

ShalkiyaZinc has also appointed Barclays Capital the investment banking division of Barclays Bank as financial adviser to the project. It appointed SRK Consulting Group as independent project manager and Russia’s Mekhanobr Engineering as a consultant.

Mr Marat Sarkytbayev chairman of ShalkiyaZinc said that “Through the proposed expansion of the Shalkiya mine and construction of the new processing plant, the company intends to significantly increase production from our current resource base.”

ShalkiyaZinc owns the Shalkiya deposit in southern Kazakhstan, which holds about 30% of the Central Asian country’s total zinc reserves ShalkiyaZinc previously said it planned to triple output by 2010 with capacity to process 4 million tonnes per year of lead zinc ore. It sold 13,700 tonnes of zinc concentrate containing 6,200 tonnes of the metal in the first six months of 2007.