In August 2012, Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) home market shipments amounted to 710,000 tons of metal goods. According to MMK Deputy DG for Sales Nikolai Lyadov, this figure sets a historic record for the company and is actually greater than what the company managed to achieve in the Soviet times.

‘We nearly reached these figures as early as 2008, but the start of the recession prevented our plans from coming true. Today, four years later, our domestic market deliveries have exceeded 700,000 tons of metal goods. This results from the enterprise getting focuses on the Russian consumers. MMK management and BOD see the Russian market as a strategically important one and as one of our priority markets. This affects the goals that are set before the enterprise’s sales teams,’ Lyadov said.

These figures take into account all the shipments immediately onto the Russian Federation market. Given that MMK also supplies metal goods to the CIS markets, the share of pure exports dropped down to 17% in August 2012, which is much lower than what most major Russian metallurgical companies tend to have.

‘In the eight months of this year, MMK’s home market shipments rose by nearly 900,000 tons against the eight months of 2011. Our key domestic consumers are pipe manufacturers, carmakers, machine-building enterprises, and the building industry; thanks to the increasing number of growth from the latter, MMK’s bar section facility is now operating to its full capacity,’ says MMK Director-General Boris Dubrovsky.