Cuprom plant relocated from Germany to Romania

Romanian copper producer Cuprom acquired a plant manufacturing anodes, namely negative electrodes made from metals or graphite, based in Hettstedt, in the centre of Germany, as part of its strategy to double turnover by 2007.

Cuprom, a business taken over by two former bankers and a lawyer, earmarked about 15 million dollars (12.5 million euros) for the purchase of the Germany-based plant and its relocation to Baia Mare.

“We hope this plant will help us double our turnover over the next two years,” Horia Simu, chairman of Cuprom, an over 100m-euro business this year, told Ziarul Financiar.

Cuprom acquired the plant from a company in Kazakhstan, owning a metallurgic centre in Germany. “Moves to relocate the plant have started this year and we estimate that the operation will be finalised next April,” Simu added.

“The plant, created to secure the permanent production of anodes, was built in 2000, in line with EU environmental standards and is completely automated,” Simu explained.

According to him, the company will retrain its current employees, but will not hire additional employees.

“We estimate that once these investments are finalised, actual production of copper should reach 50,000 tonnes per year, 80% higher than the production volume seen in the last two years,” the Cuprom chairman continued.

According to the company”s representatives, the acquisition of the anode plant is part of the programme meant to bring the Baia Mare unit in line with EU environmental standards and to retool it.

Cuprom owns two plants, in Baia Mare and Zalau, which in the spring of 2003 were on the verge of being closed, as the firm that owned them, RBG Resources, filed for bankruptcy.

Horia Pitulea and Horia Simu, two former deputy chairmen with CitiBank Romania, paid 3.6 million euros for the two plants and invested another 10 million euros.

Less than two years after Phoenix Baia Mare and Elcond Zalau were acquired, the turnover derived by the two companies, now united under the name Cuprom, rose almost four times, from 25 million dollars (20.7 million euros) in 2003, to more than 100 million dollars (80 million euros) in 2004. At the same time, production soared from 11,000 tonnes to 27,000 tonnes of rolled products.

Between 1998-1999, the two companies were sold by the Romanian state to the Anglo-Indian company RBG Resources. Over the last few years, foreign wire and wiring industry producers have chosen to relocate most of their production activities to Romania.