Posted on 10 Jan 2022
Russian Far Eastern steelmaker Amurstal shipped last year 1 million tonnes of steel billet to South Korean Posco International company for further export to the countries of East and Southeast Asia, Kallanish notes.
Posco International exports and imports steel, cement, crude oil, heavy machinery, auto parts and textiles, and is the trading arm of the largest Korean steel company, Posco.
A supply memorandum between the metallurgical enterprise and the Korean company was signed in June 2018. The partnership with Posco provides Amurstal with guaranteed sales of a significant part of its products, and the measures taken over the past two years to develop the plant, in turn, will increase the volume of production and bring the level to 1.2mt, the Russian steelmaker claims.
In general, exports to the countries of East, Southeast and South Asia account for 60% of the plant's sales, while 40% goes to the domestic Russian market.
Amurstal is the only modern electric arc furnace-based plant in the Russian Far East for the processing of ferrous scrap. The enterprise produces billet, steel for reinforcing reinforced concrete structures and other materials widely used in the construction of buildings and structures, in road construction and industry.
The mill was forced to pause output in 2020 on a lack of feedstock supply, which stemmed from ownership disputes and mounting debt curbing its cashflow (see Kallanish passim).
Amurstal did not provide operational and financial results for 2021. It produced around 900,000 tonnes of billet and 350,000t of long steel products in 2019.
In December, Posco closed its first blast furnace that it had been in operation for 48 years. This will cause a production loss of about 1.3 million tonnes/year for the iron plant. Posco said it will increase the output of the remaining eight blast furnaces to make up for the production loss.
Source:Kallanish
