President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, during his visit to Almalyk on December 22, chaired a government meeting, where he unveiled development plan for the Almalyk Mining and Metallurgical Combine (AMMC) until 2030.
Shavkat Mirziyoyev instructed to hire by July 1 one of the Big Four audit and consulting firms (Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, KPMG), and to develop a program to improve operational efficiency. He added that, AMMC will conduct an initial public offering (IPO).
“In the first half of next year, AMMC will have to take steps to obtain an international credit rating from Fitch and for the first time place 5% of its shares on the local securities market,” he said.
Shavkat Mirziyoyev stressed the importance of starting work on the design of the fourth copper-processing plant in parallel with the construction of the third. As a result, the ore processing capacity would reach 160 million tons, increasing by 3 times.
He underscored at the meeting that as part of the transformation of the plant, first of all, it is necessary to digitize management processes, production and logistics, to increase operational efficiency.
“The most important task is to introduce in the next two years a modern management system at the plant, turning it into one of the world leaders in metallurgy, a company capable of operating without government support,” the president said.
It was originally planned that AMMC would hold an IPO in 2023. At the Tashkent Economic Forum, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Jamshid Kuchkarov said that the audit company Ernst & Young had already conducted an independent external audit, and the consulting company KPMG was evaluating the readiness of the plant for an IPO. Preparations for the placement of shares were announced back in November 2020.
The Deputy Prime Minister also noted that the government had begun preparing the Navoi Mining and Metallurgical Combine for partial privatization. A 10% stake may be sold in 2022.
As reported earlier, the President got acquainted with the work progress at the $ 5.12 billion Yoshlik-1 deposit development project of the Almalyk Mining and Metallurgical Combine worth.
The calculation carried out according to the JORC code found that the copper resources of the plant are estimated at 45 million tons, gold reserves at more than 5000 tons. Based on these figures, a concept has been developed to bring copper production to 515 thousand tons by 2030, gold - up to 52 tons, silver - up to 343 tons. Due to this, it is planned to bring the plant's annual production to $ 8 billion.
