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FENI Industries

The FENI Industries plant is a two-line, rotary kiln electric furnace facility with the biggest rectangular electric furnaces of their kind in the world. The plant has been in operation since 1982 under the name FENI Industries and it was acquired by Cunico in 2005. It is located in Kavadarci, in the Balkan region.

At the time of its acquisition, only one of FENI Industries’ two lines was operational and annual nickel production was approximately 5,000 tonnes. Following technical additions and capital investment by the group, the plant is now fully operational, with both lines running simultaneously. As a result, production at the Feni Industries plant is steadily increasing to 16,000 tonnes per year and through ongoing refurbishments, will increase even further, allowing us to produce more than 22,000 tonnes per year from this year.

Ferronickel production at FENI Industries

A portion of FENI Industries’ nickel ore comes by conveyor from the open-pit Rzanovo mine, located close to the production facility and with ore reserves of 22 million tons. The ore is conveyed from the mine into the plant by a conveyor belt 36.5 km long, which is considered to be the longest conveyor belt in the world. In order to optimise production, the Rzanovo ore is then blended with higher-grade ores imported from Indonesia, The Philippines, Greece, Turkey and Albania.

On each line, the plant operates a rotary dryer that feeds into a rotary kiln where the nickel ore is dried and reduced and then fed into an electric furnace for complete reduction into a molten nickel/iron alloy. The nickel/iron alloy is then placed into an oxygen converter and blown with oxygen to reduce the iron content, thereby increasing the nickel content. The ferronickel is then transported to a holding furnace where the temperature is raised to cast the metal, either as granules or ingots.

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