Harsco Corporation has announced the largest contract in its history with the awarding of a 25 year environmental solutions contract for onsite metal recovery in China to Harsco's previously announced JV company with Taiyuan Iron & Steel (Group) Co Limited or TISCO, one of the world's largest steel producers.

The metal recovery portion of the contract is estimated in excess of USD 500 million over its 25 year period and will also pave the way for the joint venture company to commercialize slag co products in China for a range of projected agricultural and industrial uses.

Mr Salvatore D Fazzolari chairman, president & CEO of Harsco said that "The culmination of this important relationship establishes a major new platform for our continuing global advancement as a knowledge based environmental solutions company. We are honored to join with TISCO as long term partners to such a far reaching and environmentally beneficial enterprise."

The JV is expected to commence operations in the first half of 2012. As previously announced, the partnership has the potential to generate new revenues of an estimated USD 30 million in its first full year of operation in 2013, ramping up to a projected run rate of approximately USD 50 million to USD 60 million per year when fully operational in 2015.

Harsco anticipates that the metal recovery operations will begin in 2012, and market development for the agricultural fertilizer and other commercial by products will proceed in parallel, with an estimated start date of 2014.

Harsco will apply its proprietary separation technologies to extract high value metallic content from TISCO's slag for production re use. Patterned after similar Harsco facilities in other parts of the world, Harsco's separation processes have a proven track record of recovering more than 99.8% of all metallics from stainless steel slag and also yield a calcium silicate rich co product that has shown significant benefits to agricultural productivity in major turf and crop producing regions of the world.

This latter point is of particular importance in China, where approximately 300 million acres are currently in agricultural production for a wide range of food and fiber crops. Researchers estimate that some 50 million acres, however, are deficient in silicon and/or contain acidic soil conditions, reflecting years of over use and the effects of acid rain in China's coal mining regions. In trials already conducted in China for the partnership, Harsco's soluble silicon fertilizer has been shown to produce a 40% yield improvement in rice and other agricultural crops. Other anticipated markets for the slag include use as an ingredient in cement and for road base construction.