Commodity trader, miner and smelter Mineco Group said its subsidiary Medoš One d. o. o. in the Republic of Srpska has been awarded a fifty year concession to build and operate a first hydropower plant on the Drinjača river.

Located near Zvornik, the Medoš project will be developed over the next two years with the 4 MW plant set to be launched in March 2017, the group with offices in London, Moscow and Zug said in a press release. Mineco added it expects this to be the first of a number of its hydropower projects. The concession of 50 years for a EUR 7.5 million project was granted by the entity’s Ministry of Industry, Mining and Energy.

In October, the group was given four location licenses in Serbia for building hydropower production facilities with a total capacity of 1.22 MW in the municipalities of Valjevo, Dimitrovgrad and Paraćin. The deadline for potential projects was set to 12 months. In both reports Mineco Limited was named as the investor. The group had said last year that its three mini hydro plants project for 2.2 MW at Rasina river near Brus in Serbia still waited for building permits.

In 2013, the group denied it was involved in the demise of several privatized companies in Serbia, after media reports linked it to a corruption and industrial espionage scheme both in that country and Romania.