Metinvest Group is considering the possibility of building a plant in the EU for the processing of iron ore raw materials produced at Metinvest’s mining and beneficiation plants in Kryvyi Rih, says the company’s general director Yuriy Ryzhenkov.
“At first, we had the idea of rolled production, but it was calculated on the presence of the lost Azovstal slabs,” he noted in an interview with Ukraine’s NV newspaper. “We will not see these slabs in the near future. Therefore, we began to look in another direction, based on DRI raw materials and the electric steel smelting method of production.”
According to him, this will become an additional opportunity for the sale of Ukrainian steel products abroad.
“Currently, the export of ore is significantly limited by the sea blockade and the congestion of railway tracks in the west of Ukraine. However, the company sees opportunities to expand the capacity of existing routes,” he adds.
At the same time, the company will invest in projects that will help improve existing or establish new production at the group’s Ukrainian assets, in particular at Zaporizhstal and Kametstal, Yuriy Ryzhenkov.
“It will also help to expand bottlenecks, especially in the production of high-quality rolled products, and it will allow enterprises to be recharged,” he said. “We tested the production of high-quality blast furnace pellets at PivnGZK in August. They can even be brought to the level of DRI-pellets, which were previously produced only at CGZK.”
However, the company will not make large-scale investments in long-term projects in Ukraine until the country’s convincing victory in the war with Russia, Ryzhenkov adds.
In June, Metinvest said that it is considering building a new plant in Bulgaria, where the enterprise already has a re-rolling mill (see Kallanish passim). The enterprise is said to be accelerating the development of its planned new steel mill in San Giorgio di Nogaro, northern Italy.
Meanwhile, Metinvest’s Italian plants are receiving slab feedstock for rolling from European, Asian, and Latin American suppliers.
Svetoslav Abrossimov Bulgaria
