Voestalpine Undecided On Location For 5.5B ln EUR Investment

Romania lost ground in the competition for 5.5 billion Euro investment from Austria's Voestalpine. The Linz based company plans to build a still mill on the Black Sea shores, which will create some 5,000 jobs, take some 700 hectares to build, and start producing by 2013. More than half of Voestalpine's production is located outside Austria, the group employing a total of 40,000 people.

Romania lost ground in the competition for 5.5 billion Euro investment from Austria's Voestalpine. The Linz based company plans to build a still mill on the Black Sea shores, which will create some 5,000 jobs, take some 700 hectares to build, and start producing by 2013. More than half of Voestalpine's production is located outside Austria, the group employing a total of 40,000 people.

Ukraine looks like the winner for this investment, given that the country is not a member of the European Union, as Romania is, hence its regulations on carbon dioxide emissions are more lax.

Voestalpine AB spokesperson Peter Schiefer said the company already signed on July 7 with Ukraine a memorandum of understanding, and it planned to do the same, over the summer, with Bulgaria and Turkey. There is no such signing ceremony in sight for Romania.

On July 15 iulie, Maryna Soroka, the spokesperson for Ukraine's PM Yulia Timoshenko, said, after Timoshenko's meeting with Austria's chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer, that Voestalpine chose Ukraine for its 5.5 billion investment which is to be developed at Pivdeni, in the Odessa region.

However, Bloomberg quoted Voestalpine officials rebuffing the statement and saying the company will make a final decision at the end of 2008, with the number of possible locations scaled down from four to two by October.

Real-estate agents ARCA East Invest, based in Bucharest, and Chayton Capital, based in London, recently stated they would sell to Voestalpine 96 hectares of land in the Agigea region.

Romania's minus is also its plus: as a EU member state it provides the guarantees of political stability which Ukraine cannot, while Agigea is close to the Constanta port, the only Black Sea port that can dock ore carrying ships of 150,000 tons.