The Metinvest expects growth in demand for steel products in Ukraine by 3% in 2020

Dutch mining and metallurgical holding with assets in Ukraine Metinvest B.V. (Metinvest) are consideredt that the year 2020 will be quite volatile, influenced elections in the USA, Breccia in the UK and completion of commercial transactions between the United States, China, the EU and Turkey. About it told holding CEO Yuriy Ryzhenkov.

"If we manage to avoid a full-blown economic crisis, and the chances of this are significant, in the second half of the year we can expect a recovery in steel demand and rental growth in metallurgy", – he said.

the company considers two ways of development. The crisis in the steel industry, which began in mid-2019 is a short-term, and a new cycle of development will begin in mid-2020. In this case, Metinvest will be able to quickly return to their investment projects and transfer them from project implementation phase to active. If the crisis drags on and escalates into a full-scale economic, the company will work in line with the strategy developed in this period.

According to Ryzhenkov, the consumption of steel in Ukraine, which today remains one of the lowest in Europe can begin to grow only as a result of incentives for infrastructure projects and improving the investment climate to attract new investors, and new construction. This is something that would be worth to pay attention to the Ukrainian government, he said.

Talking about the strategy of the company in the perspective of 2020, he noted that in the optimistic scenario, the recovery of steel demand in the second half of the year, Metinvest plans to increase load of the modernized mill "1700" MMK im.Ilyich in Mariupol and increase the pace of implementation of the investment program.

"the year 2020 will be a period of development of these projects. We don't stop them, but to the active implementation of this year, I would not expect" - summed up the chief.