Armenia: Minister of Economy Artsvik Minasyan is hopeful that production will continue at the Hrazdan Cement Company once control of the plant is taken over by its creditor, the VTB Bank (Armenia). Minasyan made the comments to the Arminfo news agency.
In February 2016 the Armenian government approved a draft decision to release Hrazdan Cement from a US$1.06m fine. Former Minister of Economy Karen Chshmaritian announced that the VTB Bank would provide a US$4.6m recovery loan to the plant. The intention was to reach a cement production level of 0.2Mt/yr and create 250 new jobs. In 2015 around 80,000t of cement was produced. Most of this was exported.
Hrazdan Cement, originally known as Mika Cement, was built in 1970. The company was privatised in 2001 and has had financial problems since 2013. The cement plant has two production lines and a clinker production capacity of 1Mt/yr and a cement production capacity of 1.2Mt/yr.