Ukrainian steel pipe and wheel producer Interpipe has announced that its new electric furnace-based steelmaking complex Dneprostal (Interpipe Steel) produced approximately 110,000 mt of steel in March this year in line with the scheduled increase in the capacity of the new mill. Interpipe's production of round steel billets in January had amounted to 88,000 mt, rising to approximately 90,000 mt in February.
The designed capacity of Interpipe Steel is 1.320 million mt of steel per year, with the mill planning to reach the full annual output rate in 2014.
Interpipe Steel is the key project for Interpipe, designed to provide the company's pipe and wheel production with its own steel billets. When the mill reaches its designed capacity rate of 1.32 million mt per year, the self-sufficiency in billets for Interpipe's seamless pipe production will rise to 90 percent.
Interpipe Steel produced its 500,000th mt of steel billet in January this year, as previously reported by SteelOrbis, while it plans to reach the one million mt mark by the end of the second quarter of the current year.