Mechel, one of the leading Russian mining and steel groups, has announced that its subsidiary Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant sold 300,000 mt of rails in 2020, increasing by eight percent compared to 2019.
The plant’s exports went up by 74 percent year on year. Russian Railways were the chief customer of Mechel’s rails, accounting for 234,000 mt. The remainder, approximately 70,000 mt, went to other Russian and foreign-based consumers. The company’s sales geography expanded, with Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant’s rails shipped to Georgia and Latin America for the first time.
Mechel’s other key customers are Mosinzhproekt and Moscow Metro, which use Mechel’s rail products both for maintenance and for construction of new underground lines. In 2020, Mechel’s facilities supplied over 87,000 mt of rails for construction of new metro lines and repairs to the existing metro railways in the Russian capital.
“Since we launched rail production at Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant’s universal rolling mill, we have shipped over 1.5 million mt of rails to our domestic and international partners. In the nearest future, we plan to master production of new types of rails at our Chelyabinsk facility, thus further expanding our product range,” Mechel’s CEO Andrey Ponomarev commented.