WAR! Zaporizhstal restarts blast furnace after 33 days of standstill

Metinvest Group, owned by Rinat Akhmetov and Vadym Novynskyi, has decided on the partial transition into work of Zaporizhstal’s shops that have been on hot standby.

The works have started blowing in blast furnaces No. 3 and No. 4. The plant’s transport, energy, engineering, and other auxiliary units operate to ensure the production process’s stability. Over time, after producing cast iron by the blast furnaces, the subsequent links in the production chain will be put into service.

“Zaporizhstal is working! Thirty-three days of silence with no cast iron in the blast furnaces or hot metal passed through the rolling mill preceded the start-up of production. It is a second major standby in works’ history. The first occurred during the Second World War,” General Executive Officer of PJSC Zaporizhstal O. Myronenko wrote on his FB page. 

Earlier, Yurii Ryzhenkov, CEO of Metinvest, claimed that Ukraine lost around 30-40% of its metallurgical capacities because of the war against Putin’s Russia. Up till now, the works shut down only once during WWII.