The Mytilineos corporate group’s leadership, speaking with market analysts via a conference call yesterday, presented an upbeat picture for 2016, noting that second-half results will be better than those of the first half, and also disclosed that group member METKA, a leading international contractor and industrial manufacturing group, has been awarded a project to develop Iran’s first solar farm, a 10-MW capacity facility.

Evangelos Mytilineos, chief executive at the Mytilineos corporate group, stressed that the group’s financial performance in 2016 will exceed analyst forecasts. Last year, the Mytilineos group had performed better in the first half than in the second.

Evangelos Mytilineos was particularly optimistic about the corporate group’s energy division results for the second half of this year. He told analysts that the Mytilineos group is striving to make gradual and steady progress and highlighted a strategic agreement established by the group’s subsidiary firm Protergia with Cosmote, the country’s leading mobile telephony retailer, to serve the retail electricity market. Cosmote controls an extensive network of Germanos and Cosmote retail outlets around Greece.

CAT mechanism payments, which local electricity producers were deprived of during the first four months of the year as a result of the delayed implementation of the country’s temporary CAT system, will boost the Mytilineos group’s second-half results, the corporate group’s administration informed analysts.

As for the group’s metallurgy division, the chief executive informed that increased Chinese supply to the global market is lowering aluminium prices. Mytilineos said a new cost-cutting program would be implemented at group member Aluminium of Greece in 2017 and 2018, following two previous cost-cutting initiatives taken by the subsidiary.

Giannis Mytilineos, the head at METKA, announced the news of the company’s agreement to develop Iran’s first solar farm. Already underway, it is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year.

Also for Iran, the company has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to develop a 900-MW power station and is currently engaged in talks concerning financing options.

Banking restrictions in Iran have yet to be overcome despite the lifting, early this year, of western-imposed trade sanctions on the country. Once the banking hurdle is cleared, the power station’s development is expected to make swift progress and significantly boost METKA’s results.