Aluminum producer Alro gets EUR 50 mln loan from Romania's EximBank

Romanian lender EximBank has pledged to grant EUR 50 million in loans to aluminum producer Alro. The financing will help Alro finance current activities and issue guarantee letters for the contracts it signs. The loan agreement was signed end – 2013 and is valid for 24 months. EximBank president Traian Halalai believes this is just a first step in a long – term partnership. Alro has been investing in re-technologization to increase its production efficiency. Alro, controlled by Vimetco, has completed an investment worth some EUR 10 million (RON 43.6 million) to increase its competitiveness. The project, which started in March 2011 and was co-financed by the European Union, focused on strengthening and upgrading its productivity via new equipment purchases, reads a statement of the company. Under the terms of the project, Alro acquired equipment for finishing aluminum sheets, coils and strips: a tension leveller line, a cut to length line, a slitting line and an automatic packaging system. The project was implemented at its factory in Slatina over a period of 32 months. The total EU grant amounted to some EUR 4 million (RON 17.18 million). Alro is a subsidiary of Vimetco N.V., a global aluminium producer, and has an installed production capacity of 265,000 tonnes of aluminum per year, making it the largest aluminum producer in Central and Eastern Europe when measured by volume. editor@romania-insider.com