Russian miner and steelmaker Evraz will build a new flat steel mill at its ZapSib works, to be commissioned in 2021, the company says. The steelmaker does not currently produce finished flat products in Russia.

The 2.5 million tonne/year integrated steelworks is estimated to cost $490 million and will be based on thin slab casting technology. The mill will produce slab of 70-100mm thickness and hot rolled coil and plate of 1.2-25mm thickness and 900-1,600mm width. Russian flat steel producers do not currently produce thin-gauged HRC of considerable width.

Evraz plans to start rolling its first coil in 2021, and achieve nameplate capacity in 2022-2023, it says in a report seen by Kallanish. The majority – 1.5m t/y – of output will be sold in the Russian domestic market in the sub-Urals regions, with the 1m t/y balance exported, mainly to Asia. The new production volumes will replace around 2.7m t/y of current slab and billet sales, the overwhelming majority of which are exported. This will signal Evraz’s partial exit from the merchant slab and billet markets.

Behind Evraz’s decision to enter a new product sector is the projected growth of demand for flat steel in the Russian market, underpinned by the state's forecasted infrastructure spending. Last year Russian domestic flat products consumption reached 24mt, while the slab-HRC spread equalled $145/t, Evraz notes. Evraz expects its total domestic shipments to reach 6.9m t/y by 2023, as compared to 4.1m t/y in 2017.

Evraz sees Russian steel demand continuing at its annual growth rate of around 2.5% since 2017 through to 2023. Flat steel consumption is likely to hover around 25m t/y in 2019-2023.