NLMK’s downstream re-rolling assets in Europe and North America are the most likely destinations for the increased volumes of material, it said.
“If we have [an extra] one million tonnes, we predominantly would be channelling those new sales to our own rerolling mills,” Oleg Bagrin, ceo of the NLMK Group, said.
NLMK produced 13 million tonnes of crude steel in 2016, but intends to raise this figure to at least 14 million tonnes by 2019.
One way it will achieve this is by using the 2.20 million tpy of excess pig iron capacity from an idle blast furnace and another currently running at half-capacity at its integrated steelmaking plant in Lipetsk, Russia.
“We have one blast furnace idle and another is at 50%. We can use the extra pig iron capacity but only when we can find a stable conversion route,” Bagrin said.
“We are not selling pig...
