Russia reports increase in flats, longs production

According to the statistical data, Russian production of long products rose 8.1 percent and that of flat rolled products rose 5.5 percent, including 8 percent increase in cold-rolled flat products, year on year in the first half of 2006. However, month on month indexes show relatively small decrease in both production of long products and flat rolled, 1.7 percent for long products and 2.4 percent for flat rolled products, in June of 2006. In June of 2006, the production of long products rose 25.1 percent to 2.8 million tons and that of flat rolled rose 8.3 percent to 2.1 million tons, including 9.8 percent increase in production of cold-rolled flat products to 713,000 tons, compared to June of 2005.