Mechel sells ferroalloy assets to Turkish Yildirim for $425 million

Russian coal mining firm Mechel is selling its ferro-alloy assets to Turkey's Yildirim Group for $425 million and will use the proceeds to shrink its debt of more than $9 billion as well as invest in core projects, Reuters reports. The coal, iron ore and steel group, one of Russia's largest, has cut investments and put non-core assets on the market to service the billions in debt it amassed in a dash for growth before the 2008 financial crisis."The funds our company will get from this deal will help the company to deleverage and continue to finance its priority development projects," Mechel's Chief Executive Evgeny Mikhel said in a statement on Thursday.The assets Mechel is selling to Yildirim Group, Turkey's biggest chrome ore producer, include its Kazakh mining plant with probable chrome ore reserves of 20 million tonnes and its Tikhvin plant near Saint-Petersburg, which produces 120,000 tonnes of ferrochrome per year, Reuters reports.