Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) looked at the results of its activity in January 2008. The company produced 120,600 tons of ore (which falls short of the previous January’s figures by 22.3%), 932,800 tons of agglomerate (which exceeds the figures for January 2007 by 5.1%), 496,500 tons of coke (which is 9% better than a year earlier), and 874,500 tons of cast iron (which is 7.2% better than a year earlier) in the first month of 2008. The company was able to produce more than 1.2 million tons of steel a month for the first time over the last fifteen years, MMK’s PR Department reports. This means the enterprise has set a new record in its post-Soviet history, outstripping the result achieved in July 2007 when 1,173,000 tons of steel were made. A new record has been set in the rolled metal production as well: the enterprise manufactured 1,190,800 tons of hot rolled products (which is 9.6% better than in January 2007, better than the record-setting 1,140,000 tons produced in July 2007, and better than the Soviet-era record of 1,111,000 tons made in March 1990).


In addition, MMK produced 1,117,900 tons of metal goods in January 2008, which exceeds the figures for January 2007 by 6.9%. All these figures are record-setting for MMK as well as for all the metallurgical enterprises located in Russia and the CIS, despite the fact that January is traditionally the month when production output tends to go down.
Apart from this, MMK exported 42.1% of all the goods it was able to sell; the share of imported goods in the total output volume came to 45.8% in January 2008.