OREANDA-NEWS  On 02 December was announced, that in 2009, the Poltava ore mining and enrichment plant (PGOK) intends to cut the production of iron ore pellets by 8% or 0.7 million tons to 8 million tons due to the financial and economic turmoil, director general of the plant Viktor Lotous told. He said that the plant had earlier planned to produce 10,2 million tons of the pellets in 2009. "However, we will face the fall of 4% by the end of 2008," he said. He also said that in 2008, the Poltava OMEP will reduce the volumes of the production by 4%, compared to 2007 to 8.7 million tons of pellets. Lotous said that the Poltava OMEP is 90-percent focused on the export of its produce, thus it was one of the first to be hit by the global financial turmoil. Lotous said that the plant had earlier planned to produce 750,000 tons of pellets, but has downgraded the outlook to about 500,000 tons. At the same time, he said that the enterprise does not plan to issue the redundancy. According to Lotous, due to the fall of the demand and prices for the produce, the profitability of the plant production was 54% in July-September 2008, and it is expected to have the profitability of 3-4% in November-December 2008. The plant expects to face the gravest state in January-March 2009. As Ukrainian News earlier reported, the OMEP planned to increase the pellet production by 5.82% or 0.528 million, compared to 2007 to UAH 9.6 million tons. In 2007, the Poltava OMEP increased pellet output by 6.1% or 522,000 tons to 9,072,000 tons, compared to 2006. The Poltava OMEP is controlled by the Finance and Credit bank group of Kostiantyn and Oleh Zhevaho through Ferrexpo AG company (Switzerland), which owns over 85% of the shares in the Poltava ore mining and enrichment plant.