Ferrexpo

Ferrexpo plc is a Swiss-based commodity trading and mining company which is the third largest exporter of iron ore pellets in the world. Ferrexpo's operating base is in central Ukraine, where it operates three iron-ore mines and an iron ore pellet production facility. The company's trading office is located in London where it is listed on the London Stock Exchange and it is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index and FTSE4Good Index.
History.
The business was founded by the Soviet government in 1960 as the "" to exploit iron ore reserves in Horishni Plavni (formerly Komsomolsk), Ukraine. In 1977 it started selling its product in the form of iron ore pellets.
In June 2007, Ferrexpo plc was listed on the London Stock Exchange, producing 8.6 million tonnes of iron ore pellets in the year prior to listing.
In 2008 and 2009 the company established additional new complexes around Horishni Plavni and Kremenchuk. In 2011, the Company opened its second iron ore mine, the Yeristovo mine, which is located immediately north of the Company's main iron ore mine - the Poltava iron ore mine. Upon opening Yeristovo, Ferrexpo became the first company to open a new mine in Ukraine since the country's independence.
In March 2019 the company delayed publication of its results pending an investigation into charitable donations in Ukraine. In April 2019 its auditors Delloite resigned, with Ferrexpo's former chief financial officer selling £400,000 of shares the day before the announcement. In August 2019 Ferrexpo announced that the charitable donations may have been misappropriated; it had donated $24 million to the charity in 2017 and $9.5 million in 2018.
Following over US$2.75 billion of investment in the Company's operating assets since listing, the Company increased production to 11.2 million tonnes of iron ore pellets in 2020.
Operations.
Ferrexpo produces iron ore pellets, which are used in the global steel industry to produce high quality types of steel. Iron ore pellets are the highest quality form of iron ore that steel producers can utilise, offering steel producers the opportunity to improve blast furnace productivity, whilst simultaneously reducing carbon emissions by 40% for every tonne of pellets used instead of the more commonly used sinter fines, which are typically lower grade and require sintering prior to charging into the blast furnace.
The Company, which sells most of its product to steel mills of Eastern Europe, is organised into the following units:
The company's mining components are all based in central Ukraine and consist of:
Reserves and resources.
Ferrexpo has a JORC-compliant Ore Reserve estimate of 1,678 million tonnes for its mining operations in Ukraine for the Gorishne-Plavninske-Lavrykivske ('GPL') and Yerystivske deposits. On the basis of the Company processing 28 million tonnes of ore in 2019, Ferrexpo has over 55 years of additional mine life remaining.
Ferrexpo has a JORC-compliant Mineral Resource estimate of 6.1 billion tonnes of iron ore, dated June 2020. To the north of the Company's JORC-compliant Mineral Resources, the Company has a further five exploration licences situated along strike of the Company's operational mines. These exploration licences, referred to as the Northern Deposits, have a further 13.1 billion tonnes of resources classified under the GKZ classification system.
Ownership.
The founder, Kostyantyn Zhevago, owns 50.3% of the company.