URALCHEM

Russian fertilizer plant poses threat in Europe

Uralchem is Russia's biggest fertilizer corporation. Like many similar sized operations in Russia it is looking to go global, and what better way for this to happen then looking towards a European operation and getting stuck into the financial markets in London?

This is a problem, not because Russian companies are any worse than European ones (merely their crimes are a bit more obvious, such is the nature of business in Russia). There's a history of worker's rights abuses and health and safety transgressions, an instance of a couple of workers dying as a result of their practices, and widespread suffering of people living close to their plants in Russia. nasty, dangerous and par for the course in the corporate world, anywhere on the planet.

Easy to dismiss, you might think. Unless you live in Dieppe. For Dieppe is the place where Uralchem have decided to build a huge processing and storage facility. Handy for the port, handy for access to the UK and other European countries. Bloody dangerous for the good people of Dieppe.

Fertilizer plants are viewed with suspicion and dread by people in France, and with good reason. Back in 2001, a plant in Toulouse blew up killing 29 people and seriously injuring 2,500 people. One of the fatalities in that explosion was a student at a secondary school near the factory. It is hardly surprising that the propsed Dieppe factory, with a capacity for 200 times the amount of fertilizer, is opposed. The site is near a hospital, a school, the railway station and scores of residencies and workplaces.

It seems suspicious that there is widespread opposition to the plant in the town, but the Communist Party mayor and city council are in support of the plant. The Mayor argues that it will bring employment to the town, but refuses to admit the risk, declaring himself satisfied that the plant will be safe.

Given Uralchem's previous on safety, this is quite an impressive leap of faith. One must wonder about the priorities of the CP council.

Things aren't all doom and gloom. Uralchem have had two attempts at an Initial Public Offering on the London Stock Exchange and both have been cancelled. An initial Public Offering (IPO) is the way a company new to the stock exchange can sell shares in order to raise capital to expand (or, if it chooses, give big bonuses to it's board of directors). A group of NGos in Europe have been pressurising the 'bookrunners' for the IPO into not backing the flotation. Bookrunners or underwriting firms in this case are UBS, Morgan Stanley and Renaissance Capital. The technical reasons for the cancellation of the latest flotation on 30 April 2010 are not clear, but we are certain any pressure from groups such as Platform and BankTrack have an impact.

So, in the UK we can help to stop Uralchem acquiring the finances to build more plants like the one in Dieppe. We can give our support to the campaigners in Dieppe, we can show solidarity with the environmentalists in Russia who are battling away in Uralchem's home territory.

Put simply we can Globalise Resistance.

LiNKS:

http://www.banktrack.org/show/news/ngos_sound_warning_over_one_of_year_s_largest_ipos

Bank Track's report on the campaign

http://uralchem-non-merci.kinssha.org/index.htm

Dieppe's resistance (in French)