At 250 years old, the Izhevsk Metallurgical Plant is one of the oldest metallurgical centres in Russia. Construction of the Izhevsk iron casting plant and a hammer factory on the Izh River was initiated in 1760 by Prince Pyotr Shuvalov. In 1859, the Izhevsk Plant became the sole supplier of iron for all the munitions factories in Russia.
Today Izhstal is a major metallurgical enterprise which comprises four main types of production: steel-making, steel-rolling, thermal forging, and the production of strand and wire. The plant produces high-grade steel, rolled goods, metal strands, wire, stamped goods, high-precision steel articles and consumer goods. The traditional consumers of Izhstal's products are sophisticated machine-building plants, the defence industry, automobile, aircraft industries, oil, mining and tool-manufacturing enterprises. Its products are exported to North America, Europe, Central Asia and the Baltic countries.
Since 2004, the enterprise has been part of the open joint stock company Mechel, a leading Russian company that unites the producers of coal, iron ore concentrate, nickel, ferrous alloys, steel, rolled stock, high added value goods, thermal and electrical energy.
During the first half of 2010 its sales volume was 5.1 billion roubles, which is 43% more than in the first half of 2009. On the whole, sales exceeded 53 billion roubles in the period from 2005 to the first half of 2010, and Izhstal paid 4.5 billion roubles in taxes, including 1.3 billion roubles into the regional budget.
In recent years Izhstal has introduced new hi-tech equipment which enabled it to break into the world market with metal products that have never before been produced in Russia: low-carbon stainless steel, high quality tool and cutting steel grades, hot- and cold-rolled steel with high precision geometric parameters and finishing.
Izhstal is currently implementing a retrofitting programme which will provide for an overhaul of steel-making production and the modernization of rolling beds. Under Mechel's long-term capital investment programme for 2007-2011, $195 million are to be invested in the modernization of the Izhevsk enterprise. As a result, it will meet the demand of the defence industry, the construction, automobile, aircraft and rocket industries for special grades of steel; create 500 jobs during the construction period and 270 permanent jobs for subsequent operation; its annual payments into the budgets of all levels and extra-budgetary funds will grow by 1.5 billion roubles; emissions into the atmosphere will be cut by more than six times.
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A new electric steel smelting complex consisting of an arc steel-smelting furnace supplied by Tenova( Italy) and a continuous casting machine from STS (Italy) is to be launched on September 7, 2010.
Arc Steel Smelting Furnace-40
Intended for smelting steel.
It holds 40 tonnes of steel, has a nominal output of 300,000 tonnes a year. The smelting process takes 43.5 minutes.
Continuous blank casting machine
Intended for continuous casting of carbon, alloyed, stainless and special steels.
Its design capacity is 300,000 tonnes a year. It has three streams with 1,300 mm spacing.
The design range of cross-sections is from 100 x 100 mm to 140 x 180 mm. It is equipped to cast blanks with cross-sections of 125 x 125 mm and 140 x 180 mm. The automatic cutting torches make it possible to produce blanks between 4 and 12 m long.