Vimetco brings Sierra Leone's bauxite mines to Romania

Vimetco, a Dutch company controlled by Russian shareholders, which owns the biggest aluminium smelter in Romania, Alro Slatina (ALR), intends to transfer to its local company Alum Tulcea (BBGA), which it also controls, the bauxite mining operations in Sierra Leone, whose daily yield reaches about 1.4 million tonnes of bauxite. Sierra Leone is a Western African country known for its diamond, titanium oxide and bauxite resources.

The deal worth more than 25 million dollars is one of the few whereby a local company buys the operations abroad of the parent company and strengthens the operations of the group in Romania.
Alum is to buy Global Aluminium Limited, which owns the bauxite mining operations in Sierra Leone, a deal partly financed with a loan taken from Raiffeisen and worth 25 million dollars, Vimetco officials said.
The transfer comes at a time when Alum gets its raw material, bauxite, from the mines in Sierra Leone of the Vimetco group, supplying Alro Slatina with alumina for its aluminium production.