OREANDA-NEWS. As part of its participation in the BRICS summit (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), the Renova Group of companies has signed four strategic cooperation agreements in alternative energy, telecommunications, construction of marine ports and mining with its South African partners.

 According to the agreement reached during the summit, Majestic Silver Trading, a consortium of South African investors that is already a partner of the Renova Group in UMK, Renova’s South African mining company, will acquire a share in the capital of Transalloys (RAS), a ferroalloy facility.  The goal of this cooperation is to expand value added manganese ore processing. In particular, Transalloys will be used as a platform for creation of a state-of-the-art ferroalloys production facility (with the construction of two new high-capacity furnaces), with the output of silicomanganese to double to 360k tons as from 2015. The Parties also intend to set up a joint USD 100mln investment fund in order to diversify into other areas of resource mining.

 As to alternative energy, the Renova Group has entered into a MoU with South African Inyanga Energy Investments. The document suggests joint effort in the construction of solar PV parks in South Africa and other African countries with overall capacity of at least 200MW. Moreover, Renova will supply to South Africa the solar PV modules manufactured by Hevel, a Russian solar PV panel manufacturer (Renova’s JV with OJSC Rusnano). The scope of export to South Africa is expected around 100MW p.a.
 AKADO Group, a member of the Renova Group, will develop telecommunication business together with South African Factostep. The companies intend to cooperate in developing broadband in South Africa and Mozambique.

 In its partnership with OJSC MDB COMPAS and South African GUMA, the Renova Group is planning to establish and develop marine and river port infrastructure in South Africa. The construction of these facilities will be based on the mobile ports know-how of MDB COMPAS.

 According to Viktor Vekselberg, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Renova Group, “The signed MOUs testify for high degree of trust between the Renova Group and its South African partners. We have been in South Africa since 2005 and have established two major mining companies here. Our plan is to expand our scale and diversify our African presence in terms of the industries we engage in. I am sure that the recent BRICS summit hosted by the Republic of South Africa will give a strong impetus to our new projects and overall development of our two countries’ economic partnership”.