Nordic firms at Mining Vietnam have had a busy few days

Nordic companies taking part in Mining Vietnam 2012 held 7-9th March 2012 in International Center For Exhibition (ICE), Cultural Palace ,Hanoi either as the parent company or through a subsidiary include:

ABB (SIX: ABBN, OMX: ABB, NYSE: ABB)
FLSmidth (OMX: FLS)
Outotec (OMX: OTE1V)
Rautaruukki (OMX: RTRKS)

The event is the inaugural Vietnam edition of Allworld Exhibitions’ Mining Indonesia trade exhibition and conference. The mining industry in Vietnam is emerging and local firms and the like are seeking partners and contacts at the event. All of the Nordic companies listed above have had some large news to tell these past couple of days.

ABB could already show electrical equipment contract in Vietnam as Masan Resources ordered power and automation equipment for Nui Phao mine and surrounding infrastructure. The unique polymetallic mine under development is located some 80 kilometres from Hanoi in Dai Tu District of Thai Nguyen Province and has resources of tungsten, fluorspar, bismuth, copper and gold.

ABB’s technology was also used to save energy at the Jebel Ali refinery, which is the world’s largest stand alone sugar refinery in Dubai. Furthermore the company announced today that it received a 15 million USD subsea cable order for Humber Gateway wind farm offshore UK.

FLSmidth said today that it has received a 38 million USD copper mine supplies contract from former USSR region including one large SAG mill and and two of the world's largest ball mills. Yesterday the company said that the cartel penalty against its former subsidiary Silvallac S.A (later Trioplast Wittenheim) for European industrial packaging cartel from 1982 to 2001 was reduced by approximately 50% with FLSmidth’s liability reduced to just ove 15 million Euros.

There has not been much news about the Ludowici takeover battle in the last couple of days. Earlier the Australian Takeovers Panel said that FLSmidth had the right to increase its bid for Ludowici but it should have done so earlier, so it might need to compensate those Ludowici shareholders who sold shares from 23 January 2012 until 31 January 2012. Both Ludowici and Weir are also partaking in the conference.

There have been several large ownership changes in Outotec in the past couple of days. Finnish government’s investment arm Solidium flagged over 5% ownership today. Goldman Sachs flagged 5.37% holding the day before yesterday and then yesterday said that its stake had slid to 0.42% in a quick swing trade.

Today Outotec said it has signed an 80 million Euro sulphuric acid technology deal with Zambia-based mining company Kansanshi Mining plc. Outotec was selected to build world's largest metallurgical sulphuric acid plant downstream of a new copper smelter in Solwezi, North-Western Province, Zambia.

Rautaruukki’s CEO Sakari Tamminen told news agency Reuters yesterday that the company sees that a recovery in European steel prices is taking place in Q1 and that they expect to prices to continue to climb during Q2.