The Azerbaijan Minister of Economic Development, Heydar Babayev, said on February 8, 2007 that the negotiations with the French cement producer Lafarge are already at the level of signing contract, Trend reports. According to him, the technical experts recently visited Azerbaijan and collected all necessary information.
After concluding contract, the Company will begin the construction of the second cement plant in Azerbaijan and it will allow creating competition with the only cement producer in Azerbaijan, Garadagh Cement. The project is estimated at nearly в'¬100-150 mln which will be directed towards constructing an enterprise with the newest technologies. The production capacity of the enterprise will be 1 mln tons. The place of the new cement plant has not been defined yet.
A decision will be made after analyzing the data collected by the experts of Lafarge, the Minister said. Azerbaijan Investment Company is planning to participate in the project at the level of 20%, and the remaining part will be ensured by Lafarge.