UrBC, Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk Region, February 11, 2011. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) delivered 2,376,600 tons of rolled metal goods to the pipe industries last year, which was 48% better than a year earlier (1,603,000 tons). In fact, the share of metal goods meant for pipe manufacturing and delivered onto the home market came to 34% in 2010 compared with 33% in 2009.

MMK’s main customers among pipe plants are Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant, Volzhsky Tube Rolling Plant, and Seversky Pipe Plant that are all members of Pipe Metallurgical Company; Vyksunsky Metallurgical Plant and Almetyevsky Pipe Plant are members of United Metallurgical Company (OMK). MMK reports the great increase in pipe and tubing products has to with the launch of plate Mill 5000 in 2009; the capacity of the mill comes to 1.5m tons of goods a year, and the mill is meant for making high quality tubing for large-diameter pipes. The mill reached its projected capacity last year.

The first millionth ton of hot-rolled products was manufactured at the mill in September 2010. All in all, the mill’s good outputs amounted to 943,000 tons in 2010.

‘Mill 5000 helped us build our share of the Russian rolled metal goods markets and allowed for taking part in such great O&G projects like Sakhalin-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok, Bovanenkvovo-Ukhta, and ETC-2 and VSTO natural gas and oil pipelines,’ MMK reports.