Aurubis is Europe’s largest copper producer and the world’s second-largest copper recycler. At least 25 percent of Aurubis AG stock is controlled by Salzgitter AG, a German company, one of the largest global steel producers. Almost twenty seven percent of Salzgitter AG’s shares, a control package,are in the hands of Lower Saxony, a German federal state in the northwest of the country.[1]
For almost two decades, Aurubis has been actively involved in copper and other mineral extractions in Nagorno-Karabakh, becoming one of the biggest international partners of the Nagorno-Karabakh/Armenian industrial complex.[2] Annually, Aurubis purchases and imports 10,000 metric tons of blistered copper from the Armenian conglomerate Vallex Group,[3] the largest tax payer in Nagorno-Karabakh, which provides up to 35 percent of taxes to the state budget and jobs for 1,200 people.[4]
[1] Salzgitter AG, “Shareholder Structure,” https://www.salzgitter-ag.com/en/investor-relations/shares/shareholder-structure.html.
[2] Ecorys Netherlands BV Consulting and CASE – Center for Social and Economic Research, Trade Sustainability Impact Assessment in Support of Negotiations of a DCFTA between the EU and the Republic of Armenia, September 24, 2013, http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2013/october/tradoc_151862.pdf. This report was commissioned and financed by the European Commission.
[3] Ecorys Netherlands BV Consulting and CASE – Center for Social and Economic Research, Trade Sustainability Impact Assessment in Support of Negotiations of a DCFTA between the EU and the Republic of Armenia, September 24, 2013, http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2013/october/tradoc_151862.pdf.
[4] Vallex Group, “About Us,” http://vallexgroup.am/en/About-Us-The-Chairman.
