UrBC, Yekaterinburg, November 2, 2017. EVRAZ Holding’s Nizhniy Tagil Integrated Metallurgical Works (NTMK) won in the national Russia’s Environmental Leader 2017 Contest as the Best Environmentally Responsible Ferrous Metallurgical Enterprise, EVRAZ Holding Ural’s corporate relations department reports.

The awarding ceremony took place during the International Human Health & The Environment 2017 Forum in Moscow. The contest was coordinated by the Federation Council, the State Duma, and a number of Russian Federation ministries.

‘EVRAZ NTMK keeps working to reduce its environmental impact and managed to decrease its atmospheric emissions by 15% in the last decade; additionally, the amount of dumped manufacturing water declined by 15%. The company directed some RUR 8bn to environmental projects in the last ten years or so,’ the department says.

The decrease in air and water emissions is one of the plant’s key priorities at the moment. The company shut down most of its environmentally harmful production facilities. All new equipment that arrives at the plant is as ‘green’ as possible. NTMK is currently working on a new, up-to-date blast furnace with sleeve filters that will purify the exhaust gases 2.5 times more efficiently that the existing appliances. Also, modern benzene top-loading units have been installed at the coke-production department in order to decrease the amount of raw benzene emissions. Finally, a new dry coke-quenching unit got installed at Coke Department 3. which means all excess gases will get filtered and recycled, with the environmental impact reduced by as much as 20%.