A huge super modern plant for enrichment of iron ore and casting of iron and steel will be built in the coming years on the southern slopes of the Balkan Mountains between the towns Gourkovo and Nikolaev, Eng. Roumen Markov stated. He is the manager of “Large Infrastructure Projects” – the company that has planned the mega-project and will realize it.
The future metallurgical giant will have a capacity equal to theformer MK “Kremikovtzi” giant and will process namely iron ore from the large field near the capital Sofia. “Large Infrastructure Projects” is a concessionaire of the old Kremikovtsi plant, said Eng. Markov.
The new facility will be located only 15 km from Sofia, as there are sufficient stocks of iron ore to operate 30 years at high yields of 8-8.5 mln. tons per year, he added, compared to MK “Kremikovtzi” which had a 3 mln. tons of ore per year output.
“In order to enrich the ore and subsequently – for casting iron and steel from it, we investigated about 20 sites throughout Bulgaria on which we could build a modern plant for enrichment”, explained Eng. Markov. After many tests we chose land in the urban area and Gurkovo Nikolaevo, Stara Zagora, he commented.
The future metallurgical plant will be built in two phases. The first will enrich an amount of 8.5 million. tons of extractable ore annually. The indicative value of this stage is 600 mln. euros. The second stage envisages the construction of facilities for molding of 5 mln. tons of iron and steel per year, the investment here will be over 2.5 billion. euros.
Namely the construction of the future “MK Kremikovtsi-2” near Gourkovo and Nikolaeva forced “Large Infrastructure Projects” to seek logistical options for the transport of such huge volumes of ore, iron and steel, which in turn led Bulgaria to the development of the largest infrastructure project in Europe – “ABC + De” (Aegean sea to Baltic sea Connection and Danube river). The project “ABC + De” includes the construction of high-speed railroad between the Aegean Sea and the Baltic and the many canals and other facilities along the Danube river.
