Ukraine’s electric steel smelting plant Electrostal has been forced to temporarily stop production due to high domestic scrap prices, which have increased by 10% since the beginning of February to UAH 3,300 per ton.
Electrostal said that the production stoppage might last a week or slightly more, until the big steelmaking companies in the region satisfy their need for scrap and until the price of scrap declines. Meanwhile, another major scrap consumer in the region Donetsk Electrometallurgical Plant has reacted to the above situation by starting partial imports of scrap from Kazakhstan.
Citing the Ukrainian association of metal producers Metallurgprom, apart from the mentioned steelmakers, the shortage of scrap is experienced only by ISD subsidiary Dneprovsky Iron and Steel Works named after F. Dzerzhinsky which aims to solve its scrap problem by switching to alternative raw materials, i. e. hot briquetted iron, and it has already purchased about 15,000 tons of HBI from Lebedinsky GOK, a subsidiary of Russian steel and iron ore producer Metalloinvest.
By the end of February domestic scrap prices are expected to stabilize, with no further increases forecast in the near future. (SteelOrbis)
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