Tulachermet set a record last month producing 229,900mt of pig iron, breaking its previous record by 13,000mt set in March 2019.
The company’s pig iron production in Q1 2020 decreased by 3pc to 609mn mt from 626mn mt during the same quarter last year, primarily because of maintenance work to blast furnace No. 3 in March and April, which had been undertaken to augment efficiency. During the first quarter of the year, 71pc of Tulachermet’s sales were to the domestic market, rising by 11pc from Q1 2019.
In 2019, Tulachermet’s total pig iron output reached 2.3mn mt. Industrial Metallurgical Holding (IMH), which manages Tulachermet, also produced 2.6mn mt of coke for metallurgy last year.
Sergey Frolov, IMH’s vice president for strategy and communications, said Tulachermet’s growth rate resulted in a 15pc increase of pig iron production over the past five years. He added that the company plans to launch blast furnace No. 1, which will further increase monthly production volumes.
While IMH predominantly exports pig iron, Froloy said the growth in output would help the company satisfy growing demand in Russia’s domestic markets.