Ukraine no longer among top 10 steel maker
Sputnik reported that Ukraine's once proud metallurgical industry, previously accounting for 10-13% of the country's GDP, and providing up to 40% of the country's export earnings, is facing a severe crisis. The latest figures show that the production of steel, rolled metal and iron were down 18 to 22% in the first five months of 2017.
According to stats published by Ukrmetallurgprom, a Ukrainian association of metallurgical plants, steel production fell by 18%, to 8.7 million metric tonne between January and May 2017, year on year. In the same period, output of rolled metal products dropped 20%, to 7.46 million tonne, while iron production fell 22% to 7.92 million tonne. Coking coal production also fell 25%, to 4.18 million tonne, indicating a major drop in producer demand.
Throughout the 1990s and into the early 2010s, Ukraine enjoyed the status of a major steel-producing power. Responsible for about a third of Soviet steel production in 1990 (when the USSR was ranked number one in global steel output), Ukraine ranked fifth in the world in steel output immediately following independence in 1992. A quarter of a century later, the country faces the prospect of dropping out of the top ten producers.
Commenting on the trend, Mr Svobodnaya Pressa contributor Stanislav Vorobyov explained that in contrast to Russia, whose metallurgical enterprises are strewn across the country (including the Ural Mountains, Siberia, and western Russia), Ukraine's output is highly concentrated in the country's southeast.
Nearly all of Ukraine's steel enterprises (which include 19 large and medium-sized mills, 12 tube mills and 20 metalware enterprises) are concentrated in an area roughly 250 by 200 km – which features good industrial and transport infrastructure, and is close to the sea ports of Mariupol and Nikolaev.
The country's steel-producing regions include Zaporozhe, Dnepropetrovsk, Nikolaev and Kharkov, as well as the civil war-torn regions of Donetsk and Lugansk. High quality iron ore is extracted mainly in the Krivoy Rog iron basin in Dnepropetrovsk region, while coking coal is mined in Lugansk and Donetsk regions, and processed in regional coking plants (the largest being the Avdiivka Coke Plant, located near the frontlines of the frozen civil conflict).
Source : Sputnik