Midstream

This balanced business model allows us to quickly and flexibly adjust our production according to the market situation. The steel produced by our Group in Russia is one of the lowest-cost products in the world. This is facilitated by proximity to the sources of our raw materials, the relatively low cost of energy and labour, and the highly efficient technology we use.

Over the last few years, NLMK has been actively developing its secondary metallurgy capacity. This has allowed us to expand our product mix to include high-quality grades of steel that are in demand on the market. Recently, this competitive advantage has allowed the Group to further expand its low-cost production base in Russia: in 2011, we commissioned a new blast furnace and basic oxygen furnace, increasing our steelmaking capacity by over a third.  In 2016, after a scheduled overhaul of Blast Furnace No.6 (BF-6) at the Group’s main production site in Lipetsk, we increased the maximum output of the furnace by 7% to 3.1 million tonnes per year. 90% of NLMK blast furnace capacity covered by resource-saving PCI.