Canadian mining company Eldorado Gold, one of Greece’s largest foreign investors, yesterday said it planned to suspend investment at its mines in Greece following what it said are government delays in the issuing of permits and licenses.
Eldorado, which runs Greek subsidiary Hellas Gold, operates mines in northern Greece that have faced vehement opposition from parts of local communities on environmental grounds, with protests often turning violent.
Eldorado said it would continue maintenance and environmental safeguards, but would make no further investment in three mines in the Halkidiki area of northern Greece and two projects in the northeastern province of Thrace.
Photo: Reuters
“Delays continue in issuing routine permits and licenses for the construction and development of the Skouries and Olympias projects in Halkidiki, northern Greece,” the company said. “These permitting delays have negatively impacted Eldorado’s project schedules and costs, ultimately hindering the company’s ability to effectively advance development and operation of these assets.”
The firm, which employs more than 2,000 people in Greece, said the “suspension and termination of contractors and employees” would be done according to Greek law.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Sunday said his left-led coalition government was friendly toward business and investments.
“This government is friendly towards entrepreneurship and investments,” Tsipras said during his annual news conference at a trade fair in Thessaloniki.
However, “we want investments, we want a healthy business environment, but we want to protect labor relations and the environment,” he said.
Reacting to Eldorado’s announcement, Greek Minister of the Interior Panos Skourletis said that according to the contract signed between the company and the Greek state, differences would be resolved through arbitration.
“This is the phase we are at now,” he said, adding that the company’s stance “shows intolerance towards Greek legality.”
“It might be a move of political pressure towards the government at a crucial time,” Skourletis said, noting the announcement came during the Thessaloniki trade fair where the prime minister traditionally lays out his economic policy.
He insisted Greece was friendly toward foreign investments, but that the Canadian project, being a mining operation, was a special case.
“Such kinds of investments no longer exist in the rest of Europe. They’re not allowed due to the great environmental cost they have,” Skourletis said. “So it’s wrong to connect this particular case with the general picture in the area of investments [in Greece].”
The company said it was still awaiting details from the government regarding pending arbitration, and pointed out that Greece’s Council of State, the country’s highest administrative court, had issued 18 decisions in its favor in various permit disputes.
Greece has been struggling to emerge from a deep financial crisis that has wiped out more than a quarter of its economy and left the country reliant on three international bailouts. Attracting foreign investment has been seen as a key in standing on its own feet again.
However, the Halkidiki mines have been mired in controversy for decades, with Eldorado’s predecessors facing similar protests.
Many in the local communities are vehemently opposed to the development of the mines on environmental grounds, saying local forests would be decimated and groundwater could be contaminated.
Eldorado has countered that it is carrying out environmental cleanup work even of its predecessors and rejects accusations of pollution.
When first elected on an anti-bailout platform in 2015, Tsipras’ government initially moved to suspend some of the permits that had been granted to the mining company.
Eldorado said the Skoures and Olympias projects and Stratoni mine would start being placed “on care and maintenance” starting Sept. 22, at an estimated cost of US$30 million, while environmental protection work would continue. It said sustaining maintenance costs would be about US$25 million per year.
“It is extremely unfortunate to find ourselves at this impasse when we should be advancing an important commercial project in partnership with Greece and adding another 1,200 jobs to our current workforce of approximately 2,400 people,” Eldorado Gold president George Burns said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”