Bashkir soda company will be offered new and old alternatives to shihans

The authorities of Bashkiria intend to offer the Bashkir Soda Company (BSK), which owns 38% of the shares, already known and new limestone deposits instead of the Sterlitamak mountains-shikhans. Last week, the leadership of the republic, while verbally, but publicly, refused the enterprise to develop the limestone mountain Kushtau. In 2015, we recall that the company did not receive approval for the development of another shihan - Tratau. The consultants to the head of Bashkiria told reporters about several more deposits with reserves for decades, which may be suitable for the needs of the BSC. The soda company has not yet commented on these proposals.

Former head of Bashnedr (in 2007-2013) Rasikh Khamitov, appointed at the beginning of the week as an advisor to the head of Bashkiria Radiy Khabirov on natural resources and environmental safety, yesterday told reporters about options for resolving the raw material issue of the Bashkir Soda Company (part of the Bashkir Chemistry Group) ... On August 21, after clashes between activists and the police, Radiy Khabirov said that the company would not receive the Kushtau mountain-shikhan for development (in 2019, the raw materials company JSC associated with the BSK received a license from Privolzhsknedr for geological exploration and industrial development of this mountain). On August 22, he sent documents to the Ministry of Natural Resources of Russia with a proposal to assign the mountain the status of a specially protected natural area.

According to Rasikh Khamitov, the enterprise will not remain without raw materials, the deficit of which in BSK is predicted after 2024. About 200 million tons of high-quality limestone, he noted, is contained in the underground, flooded part of the Shikhan Shakhtau, which the company has been developing since the 1950s.

Since the BSC's annual demand for limestone is about 4 million tons, these reserves may be enough for the enterprise for 50 years.

Limestone reserves with a total volume of about 1.5 billion tons, Mr. Khamitov noted, are contained in a number of deposits in the republic, including Karansky, Gumerovsky at a distance of 70 km from the plant, as well as in more remote Khudolazsky, Suyurgulovsky, Almukhametovsky areas, at the Pugachevsky and Lomovsky quarries.

According to the adviser, the quality of raw materials at all these deposits allows the production of baking soda and soda ash. BSK is the largest manufacturer of these products in Russia.

According to Rasikh Khamitov, these fields had already been offered by BSK for development, but the company refused them.

Until 2015, she claimed to develop the mountain-shihan Tratau (another spelling - Toratau), located in the immediate vicinity of the plant. But Tratau since 1965 has the status of a natural monument of republican significance.

In 2015, the then head of the republic Rustem Khamitov refused to remove the protection status from the shihan of the BSK.

Shakhtau BSK is not interested in the development of underground reserves due to more complex production processes, Rasikh Khamitov noted. “They said that it was costly for them, there must be abundant drainage and so on. That is, they began to refuse such pretexts under far-fetched pretexts, ”he said.

The adviser said that BSK refused from the Karanskoye deposit because of the quality of raw materials, citing the fact that the content of silicon and calcium in it exceeds the indicators provided for by the technical specifications of the enterprise. At the same time, the Central Research Institute of Geology of Nonmetallic Mineral Resources (Kazan) gave a conclusion on the suitability of the raw materials of this deposit for the BSC. “And they (BSK. -„ Kommersant “) concluded with some other enterprise (an agreement -„ Kommersant “) and began to mislead the government,” the adviser was indignant.

Iskhak Farkhutdinov, head of the Department of Geology and Mineral Resources of the Bashkir State University, admits that the development of all other deposits, and not shikhans, will lead to an increase in the cost of finished products, including due to an increase in delivery costs.

However, as the calculations of the Institute for Strategic Research of the Academy of Sciences of the republic have shown, Iskhak Farkhutdinov said, the profitability of the enterprise in this case will still be the average market - about 10%. In 2018, at BSK it was 25%.

According to the FBU "Territorial Fund of Geological Information for the Volga Federal District", which is quoted by "Interfax", 940 deposits of common minerals have been supplied to the state balance in Bashkiria, including 31 limestone deposits. “In general, from the explored alternative sources of raw materials (for BSK -“ Kommersant ”), there can be about ten deposits. But that doesn't mean the list is exhaustive. We need to further explore, we need to do additional research, ”Rasikh Khamitov told the agency.

The press service of the Bashkir Soda Company yesterday did not promptly answer Kommersant's questions and did not comment on the statement of the adviser to the head of Bashkiria.

On August 24, a member of the board of directors of the enterprise, Albert Kharisov, in an interview with the Prime agency, when asked about the raw material problem, said that "the government of Bashkiria is now actively engaged in this issue." “We hope that in the near future all the necessary solutions will be found, and the enterprise will be provided with raw materials,” he said.

On August 20, the general director of BSK Eduard Davydov told the Ekho Moskvy radio station that, without guarantees of raw materials, by the end of the year the enterprise could reduce production by a third (a number of industries, including glass, are tied to the production of soda ash).

Neither the BSK nor the government of Bashkiria has yet officially commented on the actions that followed Radiy Khabirov's public offer to buy out a controlling stake in BSK (currently it belongs to the Bashkirskaya Khimiya group of Dmitry Pyatkin and Sergei Chernikov).

The republic lost control over the main asset of BSK - JSC "Soda" - in 2014, when it approved the transfer of its 60% stake in JSC to the holding company BSK.

Albert Kharisov, commenting on the statement of Mr. Khabirov, told Prime that “there is no economic logic in nationalization (the enterprise - Kommersant)” and did not rule out that “the need for nationalization may be due not to economic, but to some other logic ". “If the government takes the appropriate decision, we will, of course, execute it,” he said.

The Ministry of Land and Property did not answer the question of whether the offer was sent to the Bashkhim group yesterday.

Two interlocutors in the government, who asked not to be named, said that all issues related to the raw material issue of BSC and the fate of the controlling stake in the enterprise are discussed and will be resolved in Moscow "at the highest level." Certainty with further actions of the republic in this regard may appear in the coming days, added one of the sources.

Source: https://www.kommersant.ru/