UrBC, Magnitogorsk, July 30, 2018. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) Rolling Department was founded eighty-five years ago on Saturday, July 28, MMK Information & PR Department reports.

The plant’s first Blooming/Billet Mill 2 was launched on July 28, 1933. This was the beginning of the plant’s rolling production facilities. The German company Demag was in charge of designing and manufacturing all the necessary blooming equipment. The USSR People’s Commissar for Heavy Industry G.K. Ordzhonikidze attended the launching ceremony. Mill 2 and two consecutive Continuous Billet Mills 630 and 450 proved only the first stage in the plant’s rolling production’s development; MMK is one of Russia’s leading metallurgical enterprises today.

The first Medium-Plate Roll Mill 500 (capacity: 320,000,000 kg a year) got launched a year later, in August 1934. This made MMK a full-cycle metallurgical giant. The first million tons of local rolled goods got produced by July 1936. Five more mills got built and launched at the plant before the war broke out, as well as the second blooming mill made at Uralmash: this was MMK’s first Russian-made rolling appliance.