Ukraine's Donetsk Electrometallurgical Plant (DEMZ) has announced the start-up of its blooming mill with a production capacity of about 700,000 mt of high quality rolled steel products per year. The mill was stopped in early 2009.
Accordingly, DEMZ's blooming mill will produce hot rolled products of large diameters (up to 350 mm) from carbon, structural and alloyed steels, including heat-treated steels. In the CIS region, these products are manufactured only by two enterprises.
The commissioning of the blooming mill will allow DEMZ to increase its production capacity to 1.5 million mt of finished steel products per year.
The main buyers of the products in question will be machine building, pipemaking, automobile construction and shipbuilding companies from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, from EU countries including Germany, Italy, Great Britain, France and Spain, as well as from US, Canada, Mexico and Turkey.
For its rolled steel production DEMZ will use steel ingots of its own production, as well as ingots from Ukrainian producer Donetskstal Iron and Steel Works. It will also use ingots from Mechel's Russian and Romanian subsidiaries, within the scope of a strategic partnership with Mechel, which also includes sales of DEMZ's products through the steel trading network Mechel-Service, which has more than 30 service centers and warehouses in Europe.
Meanwhile, DEMZ is considering the construction of a new $30 million section rolling mill and the reconstruction of its electric arc furnace (EAF) shop, increasing finished product output up to 1.5 million mt per year.
As SteelOrbis previously reported, following a one-month stoppage this year, on April 10 DEMZ resumed production. In January-September the plant produced about 530,000 mt of steel, which exceeds the output for the full year of 2009 (528,000 mt). Around 90 percent of DEMZ's products, mainly square and round billets, are exported.