Serbia wants Esmark to stay longer - Negotiations on Zelezara Smederevo steelworks to continue February 2nd

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic announced last night that the talks with Esmark officials about the acquisition of Zelezara Smederevo steelworks would be continued early next week, voicing his expectation that final agreement would be reached within the next ten days or so.

- I believe that not only the citizens of Smederevo and 5,000 employees, but also entire Serbia is looking forward to this becuase it would be an important step forward. My opinion is that we've made a progress and taken a significant step forward from the difficult, almost hopeless situation we found ourselves in few days ago - Vucic told the press in Vienna where he was staying one day.

As the daily Novosti reported, most time during the negotiations was spent on discussing the Serbian government's request for the U.S. partner to provide long-term guarantees and, thus, ensure production at Zelezara Smederevo in the long term. Esmark Group President James Bushar has recently said that his company plans to invest USD 400 million over the next five years. On the other hand, there's an information that the cooperation with Smederevo-based steelworks is given a time limit of 36 months in Esmark's business plan.

One of the topics discussed between future partners is the construction of railway tracks from the new port of Smederevo to the existing railroad. The plan to build five kilometers of railroad to enable the transport of raw materials for the needs of Zelezara Smederevo is almost a decade old, and the value of this project is estimated at about EUR 8 milllion. This new railroad would speed up the transport and reduce the costs of transportation of raw materials and ready-made products from the Smederevo steelworks.

Železara Smederevo d.o.o.

Esmark Steel Group SAD

Vlada Republike Srbije

Aleksandar Vucic

port of Smederevo

James Bushar