Russian state-owned bank VEB and HSBC have closed a seven-year €150mn rouble-denominated deal with Danish company FLSmidth to construct Russia’s largest cement plant in Kaluga.

Denmark’s export credit agency EKF − via its export lending scheme − provided a 1.1bn DKr (US$185mn) export loan with a tenor of seven years credit period beyond the construction phase.

FLSmidth will supply a complete cement plant, equipment, supervision and training to the Russian company Kaluga Cement Plant. The plant will become the largest in Russia with more than 1,000 employees and an annual capacity of more than 3 billion tonnes of cement.

EKF says that given the current difficult state of the funding market, this is a noteworthy deal, not least for banks. “The Russian loan is a good example of EKF’s ability to make attractive funding available for banks through the Danish export lending scheme,” the ECA adds.