BACEVIC: Foreign company interested in investing about EUR 1.2 billion in nickel exploration and processing in Serbia

(Milan Bacevic)

A foreign company is interested in investing about EUR 1.2 billion in nickel exploration and processing in Serbia, Minister of Natural Resources, Mining and Spatial Planning Milan Bacevic told Tanjug news agency on Friday (September 14th), after a talk with the representatives of that company.

- This is a very serious deal and project in sight, considering that this company is carrying out the final phase of exploration in Serbia - said Bacevic, who did not want to reveal the name of the company.

- We want foreign investors to come to Serbia, but we do not want only raw materials to be leaving our country, but also to have processing plants opened here, under the terms that are acceptable to Serbia - the minister explained.

Nickel exploration would be done on three sites: on the territory of Topola, where exploration work is already underway, in the border area between Vrnjacka Banja and Trstenik and in the area between Mokra Gora and the Republic of Srpska, said Bacevic.

He pointed out that that company possessed the right to explore nickel deposits in Serbia, adding that it had already finished a major portion of the work and was currently in the process of purchasing new documentation for other exploration fields in Serbia.

- As a minister, I will help them start that exploration procedure with as few obstacles as possible - Bacevic stressed and reminded that Serbia had no nickel mine, adding that that company wanted to organize both nickel production and processing in Serbia.

The price of nickel on the world's largest non-ferrous metal exchange in London currently ranges between 17,000 and 17,300 US dollars per metric tonne, depending on the date of delivery.

Russia is No.1 nickel manufacturer in the world, with the annual production amounting to approximately 230,000 metric tonnes, followed by Canada with 145,000 tonnes, whereas nickel production in Europe, including Russia, accounts for about 40 percent of the annual global production of that metal.