A unit of EnGro Corporation has set up a joint venture with Qingdao Iron & Steel Group to take a 43 per cent stake in Qingdao Evergreen Materials & Technologies Co.

Qingdao Evergreen produces and sells environmentally-friendly ground granulated blast furnace slag, EnGro Corp said in a filing to the Singapore Exchange yesterday.

EnGro's unit EnGro (Asia) will inject 27.5 million yuan into Qingdao Evergreen to help build a factory with a steel slag pre-treatment facility. The project is scheduled to start operating in the first half of next year and its total cost is estimated at 160 million yuan.

Qingdao Evergreen also intends to build a nanotechnology research and development centre, an additional ground granulated blast furnace slag mill and a steel slag finishing grinding line.

Upon completion of these projects, Qingdao Evergreen will have a production capacity of 2.6 million tonnes per annum with a projected annual revenue of 600 million yuan.