Steel

The business of Mechel’s steel segment includes manufacturing of rolled products from carbon steel and specialty steels, flat stainless steel products, structural shapes, high value-added steel products, including hardware and stampings, as well as production of billets. Mechel’s steel segment comprises metallurgical enterprises in Russia and abroad.

Mechel is Russia’s top producer of specialty steels and alloys with the widest product range, and is Russia’s second largest rolls manufacturer. Mechel is also Russia’s leading producer of reinforcement and rolled wire.

One of Mechel's steel segment’s competitive advantages is its significant share on the high value-added product markets, primarily specialty steels, stainless rolls and hardware, with a leading position in Russia on several counts. This advantage is upheld by unique technologies, which are further developed to expand the product range and improve quality. Mechel’s strong positions on the steel market are ensured due to the group’s own expansive service and sales network.

In 2012 Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant launched the first line of its universal rolling mill – a complex producing quality steel, which will operate in the same production cycle as the mill itself. The mill’s chief product will be new types of rails up to 100 meters in length, of high resistance to wear, contact endurance and reliability in low temperatures. The mill was fully launched in July 2013. It will enable Mechel to become Russia’s chief supplier of long rails that would be up to every requirement of both Russian and foreign railways. This guarantees the company a significant share in all major infrastructure projects over the next several decades. The mill also produces various types of sections.

Mechel’s steel segment also includes the world-renowned Kaslinsky Plant of Art Casting, one of Russia’s oldest plants, which preserves ancient traditions of art casting and architectural iron casting, and is known for unerringly high quality and a rich collection of models.

Mechel’s steel segment includes

• Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant

  Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant (ChMK) is one of Russia’s largest integrated steelmakers producing quality and high-quality steel. ChMK is rare among Russian plants in that it has the right to grant its products its own index – ChS (Chelyabinsk Steel). The plant is also Russia’s biggest stainless steel producer.
  
  ChMK manufactures a wide range of steel products – pig iron, steel semi-finished products for further processing, long and flat products from carbon, structural, tool and corrosion-proof steel, beams and rail products.
  
  
  Nuclear industry, heavy and chemical engineering, power, automobile and agricultural machine building, bearing and pipe-rolling plants, constructors, producers of medical equipment and instruments – all that is far from being a complete list of economic sectors where ChMK’s products are used.
  
  As its chief specialization, the plant produces a wide range of metal products – from rods to reinforcement, from bales of structural steel to long products for pipe-rolling and machine-building plants, as well as long square-section products. ChMK is Mechel’s chief flat products manufacturer.
  
  The plant’s quality management system is certified as fully compliant with the international ISO 9001:2000 standard. The plant has also been awarded certificates by the UK-based Certification Authority for Reinforcing Steels (CARES), Russia’s Rostekhnadzor for the right to produce steel products for nuclear power stations, and Der Norske Veritas for producing steel billets.
  In June 2015 the plant obtained a certificate of compliance with the requirements of the Customs Union’s Technical Regulations for its rails of up to 100 meters in length. This certificate enables the company to supply Russian Railways OAO with Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant’s products.

• Beloretsk Metallurgical Plant

  Beloretsk Metallurgical Plant AO is one of Russia’s chief hardware producers. The plant’s product range includes wire rod and steel wire from quality carbon, alloyed and stainless steel, steel ropes of all kinds, both bare and zinc-coated, strands of various sizes and sections, nails. The plant is Russia’s only enterprise to produce micro-wire thinner than 0.009 mm in diameter. BMP’s products are used in all industries, particularly in fuel and energy, machine-building, construction, and military.
  Throughout its history BMP was Russia’s pioneer in new technologies. BMP was the first in Russia to master such know-how as patenting, hot galvanizing, tempering of card wire, tinning of heald wire, producing spring wire for the car industry, micro-wire and brass-coated steel cord, steel ropes used for aviation and rocket construction.
  
  Today BMP is implementing a new investment project on manufacturing import-substituting products – multistrand ropes with 6-12 strands and 22-90 mm in diameter, including those with polymer coating. The project has secured support from the Russian Federation’s Industry Development Fund.
  Implementation of this project will enable BMP to create over 60 new jobs and produce wire ropes that have no analogies in Russia. These ropes are used in hoisting machines, load-bearing elements of suspension bridges, coal and ore mining industry, oil and gas industry, fishing and shipmaking. The plant expects to produce its first batch of multistrand ropes in 2019.
  
  Since 2003, BMP’s quality management system is certified as compliant with the international ISO 9001:2000 standard. Besides that, certain types of products received additional certifications with respected Russian and international monitoring agencies for better promotion on the market. The plant’s products also won «100 Best Russian Products» and «Bashkortostan’s Best Products» diplomas. The enterprise was granted Russian government quality award and titles of «Russia’s Best Exporter» and «Bashkortostan’s Best Exporter».
  
  Currently Beloretsk Metallurgical Plant employs about 5,600 people.

• Izhstal

  Izhstal PAO is the largest steel plant in the Udmurt Republic. Izhstal is one of Russia’s leading specialty steel and stainless long products manufacturers.
  
  Its customer base is largely comprised of companies from the aircraft, defense, automotive, agricultural, power, oil and gas and construction industries. The plant’s produce is used in machine-building, making bearings, rigs, highly efficient cutting instrument operating at high temperatures and cutting speeds, springs, medical equipment, consumer goods etc. Its products are exported to North America, Europe and the CIS countries.
  
  Izhstal’s quality management system is certified as compliant with the international ISO 9001:2015 standard. The plant won the Udmurt President quality award three times. The company is also noticed by the letters of gratitude from the President of the Russian Federation twice.

• Urals Stampings Plant

  Urals Stampings Plant is one of Russia’s largest producers of stampings from specialty steels and heat-resistant and titanium alloys. Unique forge-and-stamping production on the basis of heavy and extra-heavy machines, which include 1.5-25 tonne swages and hydraulic presses as well as the world’s largest anvil-block-free hammer, allows the plant to produce stampings weighing up to 2.5 tonnes and up to 4 meters long. It also comprises Russia’s first solid-rolled rings production complex, which can produce components weighing from 500 grams to 2 tonnes, up to 4 meters long and in diameter.
  
  Urals Stampings Plant produces stampings for all sectors of the machine-building industry – aerospace, oil and gas, heavy engineering, railway transportation, power and other industries. The plant accounts for over 20% of Russia’s stampings market and takes up a top place in Russia’s market of rough axles for rolling stock locomotives.
  
  Urals Stampings Plant sources its specialty steel needs from Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant and its Chelyabinsk subsidiary – a science-intensive producer equipped with state-of-the-art metallurgical aggregates manufacturing all kinds of specialty steels and heat-resistant alloys used in aerospace, chemical and nuclear engineering and other industries where metals of special qualities are required. The hammers, presses and thermal equipment in the Chelyabinsk subsidiary allow it to produce forgings, including unique large-sized ones weighing up to 10 tonnes.
  
  The plant’s quality management system is certified as compliant with ISO 9001 standard by the TUV agency. The plant is also certified by the Association of American Railways (AAR), certified as aeromaterials producer by Russia’s Aviation Register, and as rail producer by Railways Certification Register.

• Donetsk Electrometallurgical Plant

  Donetsk Electrometallurgical Plant is one of Ukraine’s most modern steelmaking plants with an annual capacity of over 1 million tonnes of liquid steel, built as a non-integrated mini-mill.
  
  The plant uses an ecologically friendly technology for smelting, out-of-furnace treatment and continuous casting. The plant’s main facilities include an electric arc furnace, a vacuum degasser, a ladle furnace and a continuous casting machine made by Italy’s Danieli, as well as a 950/900 blooming mill, straightening and grinding machines, and lines of furnaces for improved heat treatment.
  
  The plant produces continuous cast square billets and continuous cast round billets, as well as hot-rolled round rolled products from carbon, construction and alloyed grades of steel, with use of such thermal treatment methods as quenching and tempering, annealing and normalizing. Billets can be supplied with both as-cast and polished surface quality.
  
  In December 2012, production at Donetsk Electrometallurgical Plant was suspended due to unfavourable market conditions.

• Vyartsilya Metal Products Plant

  The «Vyartsilya Metal Products Plant» close corporation is one of oldest hardware producers in Northwestern Russia. It is also a town-forming enterprise providing over 400 jobs for residents of the town of Vyartsilya and the Sortavala area. The plant joined Mechel in 2002.
  
  The plant produces:
  • Steel wire
    low-carbon wire for general purposes, welding wire with non-coppered surface, wire class Bp-1 double-sided periodical cross-section, polymer-coated wire, steel construction wire
    
    
  • Wire nails
    round nails without coating, square nails, building nails, roofing nails
    
    
  • Single woven steel-wire cloth with square meshes
    uncoated, made of low-carbon thermal-untreated wire, and with polymer coating.

• Mechel Nemunas

  Mechel Nemunas is a Lithuanian wire products plant that produces drawn, annealed and seized wire, nails, steel wire fiber and chain link fences. Its customers are primarily from the construction, engineering and furniture industries.
  
  Mechel Nemunas’s principal production facilities include drawing machines and nail presses with shank threading, chain linking machines and butt-welding machines.
  
  Mechel Nemunas’s products are in high demand not only in the Baltic states, but also in Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Britain, the United States and elsewhere in the world.
  
  Mechel Nemunas not only aspires to become leader on hardware sales to the Baltic states and Europe, but also to create deep-processed products distinguished by their quality and dependability.

• Bratsk Ferroalloy Plant

  Bratsk Ferroalloy Plant is the largest enterprise in Eastern Siberia producing high-grade ferrosilicon, with 65% and 75% silicon content.
  
  The plant’s production received an international quality certificate in 2005 and actually exceeds international standards which allow for up to 1.5% of additives in ferrosilicon, while the Bratsk-produced ferrosilicon has less than 1% of additives.
  
  Ferrosilicon is used in the steel-making industry for manufacturing carbon and stainless steel deoxidizers of most kinds of steel grades or alloying elements for production of insulating, acid-proof and heatproof steel grades, or pig iron modifier, as well as reducing agents for production of nonferrous metals and alloys. The chief raw material for producing ferrosilicon is quartzite. Approximately 5-6 kg of ferrosilicon is used in every tonne of steel produced.
  
  The plant is making the transfer to smelting metal out of quartzites mined at its own Uvatsk deposit. The first quartzite batch was sent to the plant in March 2013. Bratsk Ferroalloys Plant also continues reconstruction of its smelting facilities. Once that is complete, the plant’s production capacity will go up by 30%, while its electricity needs will be down by 10-13%.

• Southern Urals Nickel Plant

  Southern Urals Nickel Plant is a major non-ferrous metal industry enterprise. It is part of Oriel Resources Ltd., which comprises Mechel Group’s ferroalloys companies.
  
  Southern Urals Nickel Plant includes two nickel ore mines – Sakharinsk and Buruktalsk.
  
  In December 2012, production at Southern Urals Nickel Plant was suspended due to unfavourable market conditions.

• Kaslinsky Plant of Art Casting

  Nearly three centuries of Kaslinsky Plant of Art Casting’s history, the talent of its artists, molders, foundry workers, chasers and dyers made Kasli’s art casting unique in Russia’s industrial art, a true heritage of Russian culture and history and a vivid example for world art practice.
  
  The work of Kasli masters is remarkable in plasticity of form, filigree study of smallest details in iron, restrained nobility of its black coloring. Graphic silhouettes, exquisite detail wedded to smooth surfaces and the play of light are characteristic of Kasli casting. Their sculptures are remarkably life-like.
  
  Kaslinsky Plant preserves the tradition of lump molding in clay-and-sand forms, the so-called «wet molding». Methods used in the 18th and 19th centuries are still employed today alongside modern molding techniques. Thanks to the art of molders and chasers, the roughness of pig iron is transformed into a work of art.
  
  The plant’s model fund comprises about 800 forms for art casting and over 400 forms for architectural and technical casting. This fund is in itself a heritage of the Russian nation.
  
  For several centuries, the virtues of Kasli art have won high acclaim in Russia and abroad. The plant works in tandem with museums in Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk and constantly exhibits its work all over the world.