Apatit moves out of Murmansk
Profits are mounting, but Russia’s biggest producer of phosphate-based fertilizers still decides to move the registration of its key asset away from the Murmansk region.
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The production facilities in and around the Khibiny mountains in the Kola Peninsula are the by far most important assets for fertilizers major Phosagro. Still, the company in early June announced that subsidiary Apatit, the company unit which accounts for the lion’s share of raw materials and processing, will be re-registered in Cherepovets, the industrial town in Vologda Oblast.
«The re-registration will help optimize management processes and prevent duplication of administrative functions,» Phosagro General Director Andrey Guriev said in a presentation delivered during the recent St. Petersburg Economic Forum.
«Hopefully, we will succeed in reaching even higher efficiency parameters by removing duplicating functions within the frames of the unified legal entity».
With the moving of the company headquarters, Apatit comes part of the Phosagro-Cherepovets, the new main company structure.
The announcement of the company relocation comes at the same time as Phosagro signs a new and updated cooperation agreement with the Murmansk regional government. The deal continues a high level of financial contributions to the Murmansk regional budget, Phosagro says in a press release.
According to the company, the new agreement also includes plans for the «development of huge infrastructure objects in the towns of Kirovsk and Apatity».
Despite reassurances, authorities in Murmansk appear cautiously troubled by the move. «In principle, a decline in regional budget revenues should not happen», says Boris Pishchulin, Head of the regional Duma Committee on budget, finances and taxes. However, there is one clear minus.
«It is always easier to develop relations and solve questions with a company and company leadership which is based on ones territory», Pishchulin says to SeverPost.
Apatit, a subsidiary 100 percent owned by Phosagro, runs mines and plants in Kirovsk and Apatity, towns located in the central part of the Kola Peninsula. It has been registered in Kirovsk since its establishment in 1929.
The company in 2016 produced a total of 8,5 million tons of apatite concentrate. With the ongoing upgrades of key processing plant ANOF-3, the annual concentrate production is due to increase to 9,5 million tons «in the course of the next years», the company says.
