The Russian steel producer Mechel has released its production results for the first quarter of 2007.
During the period in question, Mechel produced 959,000 metric tons of coke - up 82 percent, 930,000 metric tons of pig iron – up 13 percent, 1.5 million metric tons of crude steel – up nine percent, and 1.3 million metric tons of finished steel products (including 112,000 metric tons of flats, 756,000 metric tons of longs, and 406,000 metric tons of semis) – up 19 percent (including a 28 percent increase for flats, a 35 percent increase for longs, but just a four percent decrease for semis), all compared to the same period of last year.
In its mining segment, in Q1 of 2007 Mechel was able to sustain the same coking coal mining levels of Q1 last year with an output of 2.23 million metric tons, but registered a three percent decrease in its iron ore concentrate production year on year to 1.1 million metric tons.
Commenting on the results, Mechel’s chief operating officer Alexey Ivanushkin stated, “In the steel segment, the positive results were largely due to the company’s progress in increasing the share of concasted steel while reducing costs by decreasing the amount of materials consumed in flat steel production. We recently commissioned two concasters at our Chelyabinsk metallurgical plant and our Romanian plant, Mechel Targoviste. We also continued to increase production output of higher-value end products such as long and flat products as well as hardware, while reducing the production of semi-finished products.”