Ukraine to tender titanium and zirconium miner UMCC on Dec 20 (updated)

Australia United Mining

29/10/2021 16:43

(Adds new date of the auction)
    KYIV, Oct 29 (Reuters) - Ukraine will make a third attempt
to sell state-run United Mining and Chemical Company (UMCC),
Europe's largest titanium and zirconium miner, on Dec. 20, the
state property fund said on Friday.
    Earlier on Friday, the fund cancelled a privatisation
auction scheduled for Oct. 29 due to the lack of participants.
The same had happened in August.  urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL1N2PY1GJ
    "The state property fund received two applications for
participation in the auction... one of which does not meet the
requirements of current legislation," the fund said in a
statement.
    The fund has said the starting price for 100% of UMCC had
been set at 3.7 billion hryvnias ($140 million) .
    UMCC is among the top 10 global miners of titanium and
zirconium ores and its global market share was 2.3% for
ilmenite, 6.2% for rutile and 1.4% for zircon in 2020, according
to Ukrainian officials.
    UMCC provides raw materials that have a wide range of uses
including steelmaking, glassmaking and traditional ceramics,
with titanium also used as an important alloying agent.
    ($1 = 26.2992 hryvnias)

 (Reporting by Pavel Polityuk and Natalia Zinets; Editing by Sam
Holmes)
 ((pavel.polityuk@tr.com; +380 44 2449150; Reuters Messaging:
pavel.polityuk.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))