Ukraine's largest vertically-integrated steelmaking company Metinvest has announced that it restarted production at Yenakiieve Steel in the second half of March. The group's steelmaking plants are now in operation.
Yenakiieve Steel has started producing iron with one blast furnace, with another being blown in. The first batches of cast billets were produced on March 20. The plan is to quickly reach stable, high production in April, with 80 percent utilization of the steelmaking facilities in April (about 200,000 metric tons of steel) and the section rolling mills being brought back on stream.
Ilyich Iron & Steel Works of Mariupol, Azovstal and Zaporizhstal are operating normally. The utilization of facilities in Mariupol is at 75-80 percent, while Zaporizhstal is operating at almost 100 percent. Ilyich Iron & Steel Works of Mariupol and Azovstal expect to produce over 530,000 mt of steel in April.
Metinvest's European plants plan to increase their production level to about 150,000 mt of rolled products per month