Ukraine’s Ilyich SW, which belongs to the Metinvest international group of companies, managed to significantly improve its production results in 2019, according to the preliminary operational data.
The company increased its crude steel production by 10 percent year on year last year to 3.562 million mt. In addition, Ilyich SW ramped up its overall finished steel output by 15 percent in the year to 3.337 million mt, local sources say. The company’s pig iron production, however, inched down by one percent year on year to 4.451 million mt in 2019. In December alone, Ilyich SW produced 230,000 mt of finished steel, 280,000 mt of pig iron, up nine percent and four percent respectively compared to November, SteelOrbis has learned.
In 2020, Metinvest is expected to further improve production results al Ilyich SW as the capacity utilization rate of the freshly renovated mill 1700 is foreseen to gradually increase, though it will largely depend on business conditions globally. As SteelOrbis reported previously, in November 2019 Metinvest officially launched the mill, having increased its hot rolled coil capacity from 1.3 million mt to 2.5 million mt per year via modernization works. Subsequently, however, the company has had issues with power supply, which postponed the producer’s entry of the market for big coils.