UrBC, Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk Region, November 16, 2015. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) had its new automobile body sheets certified by foreign car-makers operating their production plants in Russia. This was, in fact, part of the national import substitution program. The company intends to keep getting its other metal goods certified by foreign car-makers, their press service says.

The program took off in the fall of 2013, with MMK delivering its customers over 32,000,000 kg of products since then. The company is now completing commercial jobs on a regular basis. The certification procedure included many stages, from getting rolled sheet samples approved to shipment of pilot batches to delivery to industrial-scale batches.

So far, MMK has mastered production of over fifty different kinds of steels that all meet European standards; most of these are low-carbon IF steels of varying strength grades. These steels’ enhanced formability means the automobile body design can be improved, some parts can be made bigger through more sophisticated stamping. Some of the steels are BH-effect ones (they grow stronger as the layer of coating dries up), including those in the (highest) Class C. Both kinds of steels are used for front parts of a car.