Representatives from Cemex will meet with members of various Latvian parliamentary groups over coming weeks, as the parliamentary group’s press secretary Alina Petropavlovska told local news sources.
A delegation from the company will meet with Andris Tolmacovs, member of Saeima Economic, Agricultural, Environmental and Regional Policy Committee, to discuss investment plans of Cemex, the owner of the Broceni cement plant.
Cemex executives wish to meet with all parliamentary groups to inform them about the company’s plans to invest US$50m in Latvia to raise the Broceni cement plant’s capacity and build a new kiln raising production of clinker from 345,000t to 985,000t a year. The project is slated be completed in 2008.
Cemex apparently also has plans in the next two years to construct a new 1.5Mta cement plant in Saldus, Latvia and invest US$160m in this project, but one might speculate that this project is purely a negotiating ploy especially with neighbouring production facilities in Lithuania, where Cemex has a sizeable minority stake in Akmenes, but has been effectively blocked by the local owners from taking majority control.