Romanian copper draws Indian and Turkish investors

The company with the biggest copper reserves in Romania, Cupru Min Abrud, which will be privatised in the next few months, has received new letters of intent from companies in India and Turkey, after February saw investors from Austria, Australia, Switzerland and Canada, as well as Cupru Min employees join the race to privatise the company.
The interest for the company is increasingly high after it managed to return to profit last year, with a 19 million-lei (4.5 million-euro) result, following a significant increase in the price of copper, which recently reached an all-time high of 10,000 dollars/tonne.

Cupru Min holds mining licences for Roșia Poieni copper quarry from which around 900,000 tonnes of copper can be extracted, accounting for around 60% of Romania’s copper reserves. The Roșia Poieni deposits are valued at around 6 billion euros if one considers the price at which copper is currently traded on the London Stock Exchange, of around 9,500 dollars/tonne.

Cupru Min Abrud last year produced around 5,000 tonnes of copper and increased its turnover 5.7 times, to 115.3 million lei (27.4 million euros).
However, the negative results in the previous years, which led to a significant amount of debt to the state budget piling up, has prompted IMF representatives to ask the state to privatise the company, which also needs significant investments to make the company more efficient, given its use of outdated technologies.