Resumen de Magnesita losses increase 48-fold due to write-offs
Speaking about the Chizhou facility, Magnesita's CEO, Octavio Pereira Lopes, said: "This plant, acquired along with the LWB assets [a German refractories company] in 2008, has never posted adequate profitability and, with the slowdown of the Chinese economy, the outlook had deteriorated." Magnesita said that it also wrote off its failing Almenara graphite project in Minas Gerais state in Brazil, because of what it described as "the drop in graphite prices in the international markets and the limited perspective on monetisation." Steel production in Magnesita's established markets fell by 2.7% in the first nine months of the year, especially in the US. This meant that sales volumes in Q3 2015 to the steel industry totalled 208,000 tonnes, down by 5.6% compared to Q3 2014.
