Afarak Group Plc Regulatory News (AFRK)

12 Jun 2019 10:12

10:00 London, 12:00 Helsinki, June 12, 2019 - Afarak Group Plc ("Afarak" or "the Company")

PRODUCTION GUIDANCE & OPERATIONAL UPDATE ON FERRO-ALLOY SEGMENT

Afarak Group (LSE: AFRK, NASDAQ: AFAGR) the miner, processor and producer of ferrochrome and specialist alloys provides an operational update and guidance on expected ferroalloys production.

In the Q1 Results announced on 17 May 2019, the Company sign-posted the challenging conditions in the FerroAlloys segment and its negative impact on the Group’s results. In Q1 2019, Group EBITDA declined to EUR -4.8million mainly driven by the loss registered in the FerroAlloys segment. Despite management intervention, the operational challenges in the South African based FerroAlloys operations have persisted.

The business environment in South Africa, with the irregular availability and the high cost of energy has constituted a major difficulty to achieving good, reliable performance in our Mogale smelter. Macro business influences, notably the falling ferrochrome prices, influenced by US-China trade uncertainties have compounded site and country-specific challenges.

As a result, the Directors have decided to idle Mogale’s two submerged arc furnaces. For the foreseeable future, the Mogale smelter will only operate its 40 MVA Plasma Furnace for plasma charge chrome (production of approximately 4000 mt per month), as well as the convertor for MC FECR (production of approximately 1400 mt per month).

Guy Konsbruck, Chief Executive Officer of Afarak, commented:

“As we have previously indicated, it has proven challenging to mitigate the headwinds that our operations at Mogale have faced for some time. Falling world market prices for our products, largely caused by the uncertainties around the US-China trade war and the sky-rocketing energy costs in South Africa have forced us to review our strategy and reduce our output.

We have fought very hard to avoid this step, but given the losses recently generated at Mogale, and the absence of any signs of State support for the industry, we had no other choice. We have started the consultation period with the workers union to find an optimal solution to safeguard the asset and save a maximum amount of jobs. We also emphasize that all existing sales contracts will be honored.”

ENDS

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About Afarak

Afarak is a specialist alloy producer focused on delivering sustainable growth with a Speciality Alloys business in southern Europe and a FerroAlloys business in South Africa.

The Company is listed on NASDAQ Helsinki (AFAGR) and the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange (AFRK).

Additional information is available from the Company's website: www.afarak.com.

Market Abuse Regulations

The information contained within this announcement is deemed by the Company to constitute inside information as stipulated under the Market Abuse Regulations (EU) No. 596/2014 ('MAR'). Upon the publication of this announcement via Regulatory Information Service ('RIS'), this inside information is now considered to be in the public domain.

Disclaimer

This announcement contains "forward-looking statements" - that is, statements related to future, not past, events. In this context, forward-looking statements often address our expected future business and financial performance, and often contain words such as "expects," "anticipates," "intends," "plans," "believes," "seeks," "should" or "will." Forward-looking statements by their nature address matters that are, to different degrees, uncertain. For us, uncertainties arise from the behaviour of financial and metals markets, fluctuations in interest and/or exchange rates and metal prices; and from numerous other matters of national, regional and global scale, including those of a political, economic, business, competitive or regulatory nature. These uncertainties may cause our actual future results to be materially different that those expressed in our forward-looking statements.