Shelling on Metinvest’s longs and flats producer Azovstal has destroyed its ability to operate, local reports and a plant official stated.

The plant is in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol. Damage to the site remains unclear at present, sources told MetalMiner.

Metinvest officials outside of Ukraine also did not indicate the degree of damage.

The MetalMiner team will continue to analyze the impacts of the Russia-Ukraine war on metals markets in the Monthly Metal Outlook (MMO) report, available to subscribers on the first weekday of every month. 

Azovstal Iron and Steel Works in Ukraine. bartoshd/AdobeStock

A video from Turkish news outlet Anadolu Agency on March 17 shows shelling on the plant. The attack knocked out Azovstal’s coking plant. The plant is also a target in efforts to take Mariupol, Ukrainian media stated.

Information on Azovstal’s website indicates there are three coking batteries on site. Those can produce 1.82 million metric tons per year of coke and coal products.

The attack on the coking batteries do not pose a danger as they were wound down in the days after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, Azovstal’s general director Enver Tskitishvili said in a video that MetalMiner received March 19.

The five blast furnaces at the site were off stream. They had cooled by the time of the attack, Tskitishvili noted.

Metinvest announced on Feb. 24 that it would put that plant and the nearby Ilyich Iron and Steel into conservation mode.

As the war continues and impacts the metals sectors in Russia and Ukraine (and end users elsewhere), the MetalMiner team will break it all down in the MetalMiner weekly newsletter. 

Azovstal has five blast furnaces that can produce 5.55 million metric tons of pig iron. The plant’s convertor shop has two 350-metric ton basic oxygen furnaces that can pour 5.3 million metric tons of crude steel.

Further downstream, Azovstal has four continuous caster machines for slab production, plus an ingot casting machine.

Azovstal’s Mill 3600 can produce 1.95 million metric tons per year of plate. The mill produces 6-200 mm gauges and widths of 1,500-3,300 mm.

Mill 1200 produces blooms for further rolling of long products. Meanwhile, Mill 1000/800 can roll up to 1.42 million metric tons of rail and bar products.

Azovstal’s information also stated that Mill 800/650 can produce up to 950,000 metric tons of heavy sections.

Mariupol has the largest port facilities on the Sea of Azov, which leads to the Black Sea via the Russian-controlled Kerch Strait.

The city has come under intense bombardment as Russian forces try to clear a land corridor between the Crimean Peninsula, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014, and the Ukrainian breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Russian President Vladimir Putin also recognized those regions as independent republics on Feb. 21.

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