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Serbia Zijin Bor Copper, formerly known as RTB Bor, is a copper mining and
smelting Smelting is a process of applying heat to ore, to extract a base metal. It is a form of extractive metallurgy. It is used to extract many metals from their ores, including silver, iron, copper, and other base metals. Smelting uses heat and a ch ...
complex located in Bor,
Serbia Serbia (, ; Serbian language, Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian language, Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe, Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Bas ...
.


History


Formation and expansion

The first geological explorations of copper ore in Bor area were conducted in 1897 and covered the area at the time called "Tilva Roš". The explorations were performed by the Serbian industrialist
Đorđe Vajfert Đorđe Vajfert ( sr-cyr, Ђорђе Вајферт, german: Georg Weifert; 15 July 185012 January 1937) was a Serbian industrialist, Governor of the National Bank of Serbia and later Yugoslavia. In addition, he is considered the founder of the ...
, who later provided investments of capital from France and set up a company called the "French Society of the Bor Mines, the Concession St. George". The company, with its headquarters in Paris, started operations on 1 June 1904. The French capital remained in Bor until the end of the
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
.


1951–1988: SFR Yugoslavia

In 1951, the company's assets were nationalized by the Government of
SFR Yugoslavia The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, commonly referred to as SFR Yugoslavia or simply as Yugoslavia, was a country in Central and Southeast Europe. It emerged in 1945, following World War II, and lasted until 1992, with the breakup of Yug ...
. Since then, the company Bor was in the state ownership. From 1951 until 1988, the company has changed its organizational structure, from the "organization of associated labor" to
state-owned enterprise A state-owned enterprise (SOE) is a Government, government entity which is established or nationalised by the ''national government'' or ''provincial government'' by an executive order or an act of legislation in order to earn Profit (econom ...
"RTB Bor".


1990s–2000s

During 1993, following the breakup of SFR Yugoslavia and the outbreak of the
Yugoslav Wars The Yugoslav Wars were a series of separate but related#Naimark, Naimark (2003), p. xvii. ethnic conflicts, wars of independence, and Insurgency, insurgencies that took place in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, SFR Yugoslavia from ...
, RTB Bor made various investments which further initiated opening of the new mining operations such as new pit mine called "Cerovo". Since the mid-1990s and during the time of sanctions on the
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Serbia and Montenegro ( sr, Cрбија и Црна Гора, translit=Srbija i Crna Gora) was a country in Southeast Europe located in the Balkans that existed from 1992 to 2006, following the breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yu ...
, production in the RTB Bor dropped significantly from the very prosperous 1970s and 1980s. This has been due to both diminishing reserves and the inability to obtain new equipment that would most efficiently gather the remaining ore, which is no longer of such a high grade. Copper mining as the key basis of Bor's economy had significant effects on Bor's inhabitants due to decreased production during the 1990s and 2000s.


2007–2008 failed purchases

In March 2007, the
Government of Serbia The Government of Serbia ( sr, Влада Србије, Vlada Srbije), formally the Government of the Republic of Serbia ( sr, Влада Републике Србије, Vlada Republike Srbije), commonly abbreviated to Serbian Government ( sr, ...
sold RTB Bor to the Romanian
Cuprom Cuprom is the sole producer of electrolytic copper, continuous cast copper rod and enameled wire in Romania and the largest in Eastern Europe (outside Russia). Cuprom refinery in Baia Mare has an annual production capacity of 40,000 tonnes of ca ...
for a sum of
US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
400 million. Cuprom pledged to modernize the production facilities in RTB Bor and Majdanpek mine, in order to improve the productivity levels. However, due to Cuprom's failure to meet a deadline regarding the financing, the Government of Serbia had cut the deal and the complex was put up for privatization once again. In February 2008, following the second tender, RTB Bor was sold to the Austrian A-TEC for a sum of $466 million plus obligation to invest $180.4 million in facilities. After the signing of the contract was made, the first $150 million was delivered by A-TEC. However, the problems arose after A-TEC missed its deadline for the second payment at $230 million, due to A-TEC's trouble to secure bank guarantees due to the global
recession In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction when there is a general decline in economic activity. Recessions generally occur when there is a widespread drop in spending (an adverse demand shock). This may be triggered by various ...
caused by the
financial crisis of 2007–2008 Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of fi ...
. A-TEC was not permitted to see returned the $150 million it had already paid. The Government of Serbia later voted to scrap the contract and offer
Oleg Deripaska Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska (russian: Олег Владимирович Дерипаска; born 2 January 1968) is a Russian billionaire and an industrialist. Deripaska enriched himself on previously state-owned assets that were privatized in ...
's
Strikeforce Mining and Resources Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska (russian: Олег Владимирович Дерипаска; born 2 January 1968) is a Russian billionaire and an industrialist. Deripaska enriched himself on previously state-owned assets that were privatized in ...
(SMR) as the second ranked bidder a chance to purchase RTB Bor. However, after a set of negotiations, SMR decided not to increase their first offer and the second tender had officially failed.Bazel has refused to purchase copper combine in Serbia , Forex & Finance


2008–2017

For more than two decades, RTB Bor has been among the most unprofitable Serbian companies, with the accumulated debt of more than 1 billion
euro The euro ( symbol: €; code: EUR) is the official currency of 19 out of the member states of the European Union (EU). This group of states is known as the eurozone or, officially, the euro area, and includes about 340 million citizens . ...
s. However, the
Government of Serbia The Government of Serbia ( sr, Влада Србије, Vlada Srbije), formally the Government of the Republic of Serbia ( sr, Влада Републике Србије, Vlada Republike Srbije), commonly abbreviated to Serbian Government ( sr, ...
kept investing hundreds of millions euros in new production facilities, and even wrote off company's debts worth 1 billion euros to the government-owned companies such as Elektroprivreda Srbije. Even with high copper prices on global markets, RTB Bor continued with financial losses. For calendar year 2015 net loss was around 110 million euros and for 2016 it amounted to 42 million euros. In 2017, Greek
Mytilineos Holdings MYTILINEOS S.A. ( el, Μυτιληναίος Α.Ε.) is a Greece-based industrial conglomerate whose business units are active in the sectors of metallurgy, energy In physics, energy (from Ancient Greek: ἐνέργεια, ''enérgeia'', ...
won a multi-year trial against RTB Bor before the
Geneva Arbitration Tribunal , neighboring_municipalities= Carouge, Chêne-Bougeries, Cologny, Lancy, Grand-Saconnex, Pregny-Chambésy, Vernier, Veyrier , website = https://www.geneve.ch/ Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; ...
, seeking $40 million for failure to fulfill the contract and subsequent financial losses. During the 1990s, RTB Bor imported the copper concentrate from Mytilineos, processed it, but never sent back 4,000 tonnes of processed copper to the Greek company. Mytilineos has also launched several other lawsuits against RTB Bor over the non-fulfilled contracts signed during the 1990s. In 2017, according to the general director Spaskovski, RTB Bor had a positive net result after years of net losses, with $306 million (€255 million) of revenues and $73 million (€61 million) of
EBITDA A company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (commonly abbreviated EBITDA, pronounced , , or ) is a measure of a company's profitability of the operating business only, thus before any effects of indebtedness, stat ...
. For 2017, around 18 million tonnes of ore was mined, of which 235,000 tonnes of concentrate was processed and finally, 43,000 tonnes of copper, 5 tonnes of silver and 700 kilograms of gold was obtained. Around 75% of the processed copper is exported, while the rest is being further processed by domestic copper companies "
Valjaonica bakra Sevojno Valjaonica bakra Sevojno ( sr, Ваљаоница бакра Севојно) or Copper Mill Sevojno, is a Serbian copper manufacturing company headquartered in Sevojno, Užice, Serbia. History From 1950 to 1989, the company operated as part of " ...
" and "Pometon".


2017–present

In 2017, the Government of Serbia was obliged to find a strategic partner or buyer by March 2018, in a memorandum with the
International Monetary Fund The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution, headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 190 countries. Its stated mission is "working to foster globa ...
(IMF). The sale was later postponed until June 2018. Three companies - Zijin Mining from
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
, Diamond Fields International from
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
and U Gold from
Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
- placed bids in a tender for a strategic partner. The Serbian government has chosen the Chinese Zijin Mining Group as its strategic partner for the copper mining and smelting complex, RTB Bor. On 31 August 2018, Chinese mining company Zijin Mining took over 63% of shares of the company, in a $1.26 billion deal with the Government of Serbia. On 18 December 2018, Zijin Mining formally took over the company under new name "Zijin Bor Copper". Later, it was announced that suffix "Serbia" will be added. For 2018 calendar year, Zijin Bor Copper had net income of around 760 million euros, with most of it coming from debts conversion into shares.


Organization

RTB Bor Group is composed of the following subsidies: * RBB – Copper Mine Bor * RBM – Copper Mine Majdanpek * TIR – Smelter and Refinery The ledges of the Zijin Bor Copper are located in the southwestern part of the
Carpathian Mountains The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians () are a range of mountains forming an arc across Central Europe. Roughly long, it is the third-longest European mountain range after the Urals at and the Scandinavian Mountains at . The range stretches ...
and are mostly of porphyry type within the Upper Bor District eruptive area. The currently undeveloped underground site "Borska Reka", located within the Jama mine, represents a very significant potential mineral resource. The overview of total resources:


Criticism


Air pollution

Several protests has been held in Bor in eastern
Serbia Serbia (, ; Serbian language, Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian language, Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe, Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Bas ...
over excessive air pollution that has been intensified since Zijin took over copper miner Rudarsko-Topioničarski Basen (RTB) in late 2018. Since January 2019, Bor has been struggling with excessive air pollution, with sulfur dioxide (SO2) levels topping 2,000 micrograms per cubic meter, up from the maximum allowed 350. Protesters demanded that the city government urgently adopt a plan so that the line ministry and state inspectorates can react to the alarming pollution levels in Bor. As early as April 2019, the inspector had ordered the company to take action against air pollution of the environment, human health and the environment, because it emitted excessive SO2. Zijin then explained in a letter to the Ministry of Environment that the power outage had caused pollution. However, control a few months later, in August, showed another omission – Zijin did not have a system for wet dust removal during the transportation of tailings on the Bor mine, which also threatened human health and the environment. Zijin was ordered to solve the problem, and the company later told the Ministry that a dust suppression system had been installed, which was put to trial. In November 2019, CINS sought an interview with Zijin on the topic of air pollution, to which the company responded with a press release. It says that by the end of the year, the company will have a total of five SO2-neutralized dust spray machines. Documentation obtained by CINS shows that by that time, two of the machines purchased had been in operation for about two months, but pollution data showed that it had no significant effect on the reduction of sulfur dioxide.


Gallery

File:Bor, Serbia - panoramio.jpg, ''Bor mine'' File:Bor - panoramio.jpg, ''View on RTB Bor from town''


See also

*
List of copper production by company This is a list of copper production by company. 2020 2016 2012 2010 See also *List of countries by copper production *List of copper mines This is a list of copper mines and lists operating, closed and planned mines that have ...
*
Valjaonica bakra Sevojno Valjaonica bakra Sevojno ( sr, Ваљаоница бакра Севојно) or Copper Mill Sevojno, is a Serbian copper manufacturing company headquartered in Sevojno, Užice, Serbia. History From 1950 to 1989, the company operated as part of " ...
* Bor mine * Borska Reka mine *
Dumitru Potok mine The Dumitru Potok mine is a large copper mine located in the east of Serbia in Bor District. Dumitru Potok represents one of the largest copper reserve in Serbia and in the world having estimated reserves of 790 million tonnes of ore grading 0.2% ...
* Mali Krivelj mine * Majdanpek mine * Veliki Krivelj mine


References


External links

*
Rudnik dugova
at insajder.net {{Authority control Bor, Serbia 1904 establishments in Serbia 2003 mergers and acquisitions 2018 mergers and acquisitions Companies based in Bor Copper mining companies of Serbia D.o.o. companies in Serbia Energy companies of Serbia Metal companies of Serbia Non-renewable resource companies established in 1904 Serbian brands Smelting Companies of Yugoslavia Smelters of Yugoslavia Smelters of Serbia Copper smelters