VALUE-ADDING THRUST:

Kazakhstan-focused miner Eurasian Resources Group (ERG) plans to double aluminium output in three years to lessen dependence on lower-value alumina sales to Russia's Rusal. In this picture, a worker oversees molten aluminium being poured at ERG's Kazakhstan Aluminium Smelter JSC factory in Pavlodar, Kazakhstan. A producer of 1.5 million tonnes of alumina a year, ERG aims to consume a million tonnes of its own alumina a year as part of its value-adding thrust. Luxembourg-registered ERG, in which the Kazakh government has a 40% shareholding, also has copper and cobalt assets in Africa and iron-ore mines in Brazil. As of July 2016, ERG owed $5.8 billion to its main creditors, VTB and Sberbank, which have extended the expanding company's debt terms to 2022.