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DOKUCHAYEVSK FLUX AND DOLOMITE PLANT TO BE TEMPORARILY CLOSED

Despite of the closure of production and the absence of product sales, the plant has been conducting active repairs and restoring its engineering and infrastructural facilities damaged in the process of military actions earlier. After the restoration of the railway infrastructures, the plant hopes to renew its operation for a period of three months; after that it will have to close production, as there are no deliveries of industrial explosive agents, without which it is impossible to continue conducting extraction works. “We have two scenarios of developments at Dokuchayevsk Flux and Dolomite Plant.

12.03.2015

Despite of the closure of production and the absence of product sales, the plant has been conducting active repairs and restoring its engineering and infrastructural facilities damaged in the process of military actions earlier. After the restoration of the railway infrastructures, the plant hopes to renew its operation for a period of three months; after that it will have to close production, as there are no deliveries of industrial explosive agents, without which it is impossible to continue conducting extraction works. “We have two scenarios of developments at Dokuchayevsk Flux and Dolomite Plant. The first one is to continue operation, call all staff to work and maintain social infrastructures in full measure, waste all resources for that and, as a result, become closed after a short period without having any renewal prospective. The second one – a very difficult one for our employees and the town, but with a real opportunity to renew production in the future – is to renew production now and close the production facilities after the remaining explosive agents have run short. We believe that in the conditions of ceasefire in the region, Dokuchayevsk Flux and Dolomite Plant will be able to restore its supply channels and renew production, to provide jobs for the residents of Dokuchayevsk”, said Sergey Onishchenko, the Chairman of the Board of Dokuchayevsk Flux and Dolomite Plant. In the process of active military actions during the recent three months, the industrial facilities of Dokuchayevsk Flux and Dolomite Plant got seriously damaged: the pits were impounded and closed; electricity supply and transport communications were broken. Because of the damaged railway infrastructures, the shipment of the finished products to customers completely stopped, which resulted in the announcement of the forced outage on February 09, 2015. Today, in spite of the outage, all the company’s available resources are aimed at repairs and restoration works. 30% of the plant’s personnel are engaged in the production restoration works and the protection of the production facilities; the employees receive their wages to the fullest extent. The rest of the employees are standing idle, though receiving 2/3 of their salaries. Within the nearest weeks, the plant is planning to resume its operation and reach 50% of the previous year volumes. The plant’s further operation will mainly depend on the possibility to make deliveries of explosive agents. The deliveries of explosive agents to the Antiterrorist Operation area were suspended in the autumn of 2014. The plant’s stock of explosives will only cover three months of operation. The plant suspended operation of its social facilities, for which it forwarded over UAH 20 million each year. The only exception is the retirement home for labour veterans, where the elderly veterans of the plant are taken care of on a continuous basis. The plant will continue full operation after the repeal of the ban to deliver explosive agents required for blasting operations and mine preparation works and after the suspended metal making plants, the major customers, resume their operation. Reference PrJSC “Dokuchayevsk Flux and Dolomite Plant” develops Olenivka and Styla fields. The plant is specialised in extraction and production of lime and dolomite for the metal-making, glass-making, cement, sugar, building, chemical and other industries. The sales volume of the commercial products amounted to 4.8 million tonnes in 2014. Dokuchayevsk Flux and Dolomite Plant is operated by UMG Holding, which consolidates the assets dealing with extraction and processing of mineral raw materials of SCM Group. United Minerals Group (UMG) is one of the largest raw materials holdings in Ukraine (white plastic clays, flux limestone and dolomites, microsphere, ash materials etc.). In the nearest five years, the holding is planning to reach the new developmental level for its clay extracting and flux-dolomite assets, to create at least five new areas of its raw materials business and the all-Ukrainian chain of companies to provide land management and industrial design services. Today, UMG’s companies develop 16 pits extracting 11 million tonnes of raw materials per annum and selling 11 types of commercial products to 25 countries of the world.