Oct 22 2012
AMG Advanced Metallurgical Group N.V. announces that its subsidiary, CIF Mineracao S.A., has entered into an agreement to supply a substantial portion of the MIBRA tantalum mine output to an industry manufacturer.
The deliveries under this multiyear agreement will commence in the second quarter 2013 from AMG's Brazilian MIBRA mine. The agreement includes significant cash prepayments upon signing and commencement of shipments, and a price adjustment mechanism for a portion of the contracted volumes if certain market conditions are met.
AMG believes that its MIBRA mine is presently the world's largest producer of "conflict free" tantalum. AMG's tantalum business fully supports the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition's (EICC) goals. The EICC is a group of companies working together to foster a culture of social responsibility throughout the global Electronics and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) supply chain. AMG is committed to aligning our own operations with the provisions of the EICC Code of Conduct.
Tantalum is primarily used in capacitors for electronic equipment due to its high capacitance that can be achieved in a small volume, thus helping enable miniaturization of electronics.
AMG creates and applies innovative metallurgical solutions to the global trend of sustainable development of natural resources and CO(2) reduction. AMG produces highly engineered specialty metal products and advanced vacuum furnace systems for the Energy, Aerospace, Infrastructure and Specialty Metals and Chemicals end markets. AMG consists of two operating divisions, Advanced Materials and Engineering Systems, and owns an interest in publicly-listed Graphit Kropfmühl AG (Deutsche Börse: GKR.DE).
The Advanced Materials Division develops and produces specialty metals, alloys and high performance materials. AMG is a significant producer of specialty metals, such as ferrovanadium, ferronickel-molybdenum, aluminum master alloys and additives, chromium metal and ferrotitanium, for Energy, Aerospace, Infrastructure and Specialty Metal and Chemicals applications. Other key products include specialty alloys for titanium and superalloys, coating materials, tantalum and niobium oxides, vanadium chemicals and antimony trioxide.
The Engineering Systems Division designs, engineers and produces advanced vacuum furnace systems and operates vacuum heat treatment facilities, primarily for the Aerospace and Energy (including solar and nuclear) industries. Furnace systems produced by AMG include vacuum remelting, solar silicon melting and crystallization, vacuum induction melting, vacuum heat treatment and high pressure gas quenching, turbine blade coating and sintering. AMG also provides vacuum case-hardening heat treatment services on a tolling basis.
Graphit Kropfmühl AG is a majority owned, publicly listed subsidiary of AMG. Based on its secure raw material sources in Africa, Asia and Europe, Graphit Kropfmühl is a specialist in the production of silicon metal and the extraction, processing and refining of natural crystalline graphite for a wide range of energy saving industrial applications.