Draslovka Holding, a Czech based family group producing cyanide-based speciality chemicals, announced on Wednesday, 10 March 2021, that it will be expanding its footprint into Africa and the Americas. They will be investing several hundreds of million US$ to progress with this global expansion strategy. Draslovka has developed a new proprietary hydrogen cyanide reactor, which has been successfully operating in the Kolín production facility, in the Czech Republic for the past two years. The technology is significantly more efficient than the previous generation of production technologies. Draslovka’s reactor is approximately 15% more efficient than standard Andrussow and BMA based production processes and up to 40% more efficient than Shawinigen based processes.
Draslovka is now ready to roll out this technology on a global scale by building new production sites for solid sodium cyanide.
“I am thrilled that our shareholders have further supported our global expansion strategy and committed to releasing additional equity into this strategy. This is a very important milestone for us because our teams based in the Czech Republic and Australia can replicate its cutting-edge production technology to efficiently produce and further develop their products as well as their new application technologies for fumigants and biocides,” said Pavel Brůžek Jr., Chairman of the Board of Directors of Draslovka.
Hydrogen cyanide is a key raw material used in Draslovka’s mining chemicals, tire and rubber accelerators, chelating agents, speciality chemicals and intermediate products. It is also an important, innovative and environmentally sustainable fumigant and biocide. One of these is EDN, which is used as a soil and QPS fumigant. Even though EDN is toxic, which is a common attribute of every fumigant, it is also rapidly decomposed into compounds that are further utilized by nature. EDN, unlike many other competing fumigants, is also not an ozone-depleting gas or green-house gas. It does not persist in the environment, which is a property that makes it to be a fumigant of the new age. Draslovka is the only industrial producer of EDN in the world and utilizes its state- of- the art proprietary production technology to produce EDN.
“My father established the original R&D program more than 25 years ago and over time, we have managed to create a unique technology which has enabled us to become the leading innovator in hydrogen cyanide production process and in related cyanide-based speciality chemicals. Currently, we have more resources to roll out this technology on a global scale. In the initial phase, we plan to focus on Africa and the Americas, where we see growing markets for our products. In Africa, we would like to build a new hydrogen cyanide production facility including mining chemicals, and agrochemicals within the next three years. Then we would like to add a cyanide-based speciality chemicals production plant that would bring our innovative downstream products closer to our customers. The second highest priority on our list is to establish a similar project in the Americas with our most preferred option being the United States, where we have been actively looking for opportunities for quite some time. We strongly believe that our highly efficient proprietary, and highly efficient, production technologies and innovative products will give us a significant competitive advantage, which will enable us to achieve solid positions on these markets vis-à-vis competitors using less advanced technology,” added Pavel Brůžek Jr. in the statement on the topic.
Further information about BPD partners and Draslovka can be found in Annexure A as well as on their respective websites: http://www.bpdpartners.cz/en/uvod and https://www.draslovka.cz/
