OJSC Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works celebrates the 85th anniversary of the launch of its Magnitogorsk mill. On February 1, 1932 the mill’s first blast furnace produced its first batch of pig iron. This date has come to be celebrated as marking the launch of MMK – one of the largest metal facilities in Russia and globally.
Over 85 years, MMK in total mined more than 430 million tons of ore, produced more than 700 million tons of sinter, 614 million tons of pig iron, 791 million tons of steel, and 633 million tons of finished metal products. If all the steel it produced over this time was set out in sheet form, 0.5 mm thick, it would cover around 200,000 square meters – an area larger than Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, and Switzerland combined.
MMK has always been the flagship of the metals industry in Russia. When it launched in 1932, it was the largest metal mill in the world. It also played a major role for the USSR during World War II – supplying the steel needed as armor for every second Soviet tank, and in the production of every third shell.
In the late 1990s, MMK launched a major investment program to upgrade production. It built state-of-the-art high-efficiency production facilities focused on producing highly-competitive metal products for both domestic and international markets. Its steel-making facilities were radically updated. The long product rolling mill was restored; modern facilities for producing galvanized and polymer-coated metal were built. In the past decade, MMK launched a thick plate mill and a new cold-rolling mill (mill 2000) to produce cold-rolled and galvanized steel for the automotive industry.
In 2016, the company produced over 12.5 million tons of crude steel and more than 11.3 million tons of commercial steel products. (MMK/Ukrainian metal)