Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works, Russia’s third-largest steel maker, and Turkish group Atakas will invest over $1.1 billion building a new steel complex in Turkey, Magnitogorsk (MMK) said on Wednesday.
Magnitogorsk said in a statement the project would allow production of 2.6 million tons a year of steel products including hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized steel sheet.
The project would be built both in Istanbul and the eastern Mediterranean port city of Iskenderun and it would be at least three years before it is put into production, MMK said.
“The dynamic, fast-growing Turkish market isn’t fully provided with metallurgical production capacity and its attraction for steel producers is evident,” MMK’s chairman and majority owner, Viktor Rashnikov, said in the statement.
MMK, the world’s 20th-largest steel producer, has a market capitalization of $11.1 billion and operates Russia’s biggest single steel plant in the southern Ural mountains.
The company produced 12.5 million tons of steel in 2006, or 17.6 percent of the total in Russia, the world’s fourth-largest producer of steel.
(Reuters, 23/05/2007)