Ukraine’s Metinvest goes ahead with investments

Yenakievo steelworks, part of Ukraine’s Metinvest Group, is continuing construction of its new blast furnace No.3, which is due to start up in the second quarter of 2010, the company tells Steel Business Briefing.

The modernised furnace will have a production capacity of 1.2m tonnes/year — almost double its pre-upgrade capacity of 760,000 t/y. Investment in the project, which began in 2007, will amount to $261m (€202m), Metinvest says.

Meanwhile, work on the new rebar mill at Metinvest’s Makeyevka steelworks is approaching completion, and the mill’s start-up is planned for early May, a company spokesman says. The new mill will be capable of producing 720,000 t/y of round bar, angles, light channels, rebar, small rails and various special sections when it reaches full capacity.

At the end of last year Metinvest stopped producing crude steel at Makeyevka, having switched to producing most of the feedstock for its Ukrainian and Bulgarian re-rolling mills at Yenakievo instead.

SBB