Ukrainian firm Metinvest will take three to five months to rebuild a rail bridge over the Kalchik river that was destroyed in an attack on 23 December, claiming the life of one steel worker and forcing the company to reduce output at its two mills, the company has said.
The bridge over the Kalchik in the port city of Mariupol connects the company’s two flat steel producers — Azovstal and Ilyich — with the port and the city’s central railway station.
The bridge is a vital link in the transport of raw materials to the mills and finished products to export terminals. A temporary bridge is being built, and most exports have been diverted to other ports on the Black Sea, Metinvest said. Just under a third of all raw materials transported to the two mills and 60pc of all their exports move through Mariupol’s port, according to Metinvest.
The construction of a temporary bridge over the Kalchik will allow the reinstatement of the usual transport routes by the end of January, and will be a welcome infrastructural addition in the area, Azovstal general director Enver Tskitishvili said. The development will allow the two steel mills to avoid completely halting operations, he said.
Metinvest reported a considerable fall in its output of steel products and raw materials in the third quarter, in the face of disruptions caused by the military conflict in eastern Ukraine. The company’s crude steel output was down by 42pc on the second quarter at 1.73mn t, while the first nine months of the year saw crude steel output at 7.46mn t, down by 21pc on a year earlier. Coke production dropped by 40pc in the third quarter to 906,000t from the second quarter, owing to raw material delivery problems and several forced temporary shutdowns of the Avdiivka and Donetsk coke chemical plants since August. (https://www.argusmedia.com/News/Article?id=970700)