Ukraine steelmaker Metinvest will redirect some of its merchant pig iron output to steel production, increasing slab and hot-rolled coil exports, chief executive officer Yuriy Ryzhenkov told Fastmarkets in an interview.
"This year we expect the increase of steel production at Ilyich [Iron & Steel Works] by 800,000 tonnes - that will lead to a reduction of our merchant pig iron sales," Ryzhenkov said. Metinvest completed the active construction stage of a new continuous casting machine (CCM), which started up last November at its Ilyich Iron and Steel Works in Mariupol.The CCM is operating according to design capacity during the first quarter of 2019, the CEO said, but it will have capacity for 2.5 million tonnes per year. The launch of the equipment will boost slab production capacity at the mill to 4 million tpy, an increase of 1.5 million tpy. The unit's outdated CCM No1 will be shut.Ilyich Steel currently is able to produce around 4 million tpy of steel and around 5 million tpy of pig iron, Fastmarkets estimated."We will take out of the market definitely 500,000 tonnes of pig...