November 8, 2013. The last open-hearth furnace was shut down at Taganrog Metallurgical Plant (a member enterprise of Pipe Metallurgical Company, TMK), the company's press service reports.

Giving up on this obsolete production method was made possible due to the fact that TMK is now implementing a large-scale investment program on technical upgrades at its enterprises, including the plant in Taganrog.

The program has already resulted in both economic and environmental yields. The implementation of the investment program has meant all the open-hearth furnaces, which were the main source of air pollutants (suspended substances, nitrogen dioxide, carbon oxides) in the air could be shut down. In fact, these open-hearth furnaces were responsible for 70% of all the harmful emissions discharged by the plant.