The Azovstal metallurgical plant in Mariupol will be restored after the end of hostilities and will continue to produce metal products. This was stated by the General Director of the plant Enver Tskitishvili in his official video message on Facebook,
“I want to say that it’s too early to say, you can’t say that the Azovstal plant has been stopped forever. We will return to the city, we will rebuild this plant, we will revive it, and it will work again and bring glory to Ukraine, as it has always done. Because Mariupol is Ukraine, Azovstal is Ukraine, it was, is and will be. Glory to Ukraine!” said the CEO.
Today, the metallurgical plant, one of the largest in Ukraine, is regularly shelled by Russian heavy weapons. However, properly stopped technological equipment does not pose a danger to the city. As Tskitishvili noted, during the shutdown period, the enterprise reduced the environmental burden on the city to an absolutely safe level.
“On February 24, when this war began, the leaders of the Azovstal plant very competently began to develop a program for shutting down the plant. We stopped the coke ovens, lowered the temperature, filled them with liquid glass to prevent the coking process from going any further and the maximum production of coke oven gas. And in this way, we have reduced the environmental burden on the city to an absolutely safe level. And for the residents of Mariupol, coke oven batteries no longer pose any danger,” the top manager explained.
He also noted that the specialists correctly stopped the blast furnaces - first, they melted the entire charge, then loaded it with coke, and melted it again to reach zero on the forest. And they only left the cast iron that always remains in the furnaces when they stop for an indefinitely long period.
“All this period of time, all devices for automatic control of the environmental and technological components of the operation of blast furnaces and coke oven batteries were controlled by our employees, who on the 24th, 25th, 26th, 27th and 28th, despite the constant shelling in the city, still came to work, showed miracles of heroism and devotion to the company and the Azovstal plant, their work, their business and the city of Mariupol. And thus, we absolutely safely stopped the blast furnaces,” Tskitishvili said.
As reported by Yuri Ryzhenkov, General Director of the management company Metinvest, MMK im. Ilyich and Azovstal in Mariupol, as well as Zaporizhstal, have suspended their work, the Kametstal plant (created at the facilities of the Dniprovsky metallurgical plant - DMK, Kamenskoye, Dnepropetrovsk region) continues to produce products, mining and processing plants are operating.
Metinvest is a vertically integrated group of mining and metallurgical enterprises. Its enterprises are located in Ukraine - in Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye and Dnepropetrovsk regions, in European countries. In Bulgaria, there is a Promet Steel plant with a capacity of 500 thousand tons of rolled metal per year, in Italy - Metinvest Trametal and Ferriera Valsider with a total capacity of 1.2 million tons per year. In the UK, the company owns the Spartan UK plant, which can produce 200 thousand tons of rolled steel per year.
The main shareholders of Metinvest are the SCM group (71.25%) of Rinat Akhmetov and Smart Holding (23.75%) of Vadim Novinsky, who jointly manage the company.
