You're reading: Ukraine doubles ferroalloy output in 7 months

Ukraine doubled ferroalloy output year-on-year in January-July to 871,500 tonnes, the Ukrainian Ferroalloy Producers' Association told Interfax.

Silicon manganese production grew 83.1% to 573,700 tonnes, ferromanganese – 260% to 173,000 tonnes, 45%-ferrosilicon – 71.7% to 116,400 tonnes and manganese metal – 7.7% to 8,400 tonnes.

Nikopol Ferroalloy Works (NFW), the biggest of Ukraine’s three smelters, raised silicon manganese production 65.8% year-on-year in the seven months to 421,000 tonnes and ferromanganese 5.6-fold to 132,500 tonnes. Overall ferroalloy output at Nikopol rose 140% year-on-year to 554,000 tonnes.

The EastOne group, set up towards the end of 2007 when the Interpipe Corporation was being restructured, and the Privat Group control NFW.

Zaporizhia Ferroalloy Works (ZFW) saw silicon manganese production soar 130% to 103,100 tonnes in the seven months, with 45%-ferrosilicon output rising 120% to 33,800 tonnes, ferromanganese up 64.4% to 40,500 tonnes and manganese metal production rising 7.7% to 8,400 tonnes. Overall ferroalloy output at ZFW doubled to 185,800 tonnes.

ZFW controls 30%-35% of the Ukrainian market and exports ferroalloys to the CIS, EU, Asia and Africa. It imports concentrate from Ghana, Brazil, Australia, Russia and Poland in order to achieve the right chemical composition for ferroalloys.

PrivatBank controls ZFW and the Stakhanov Ferroalloy Plant (SZF) from Ukraine’s Luhansk region, which bolstered output 58.2% to 82,600 tonnes of 45%-ferrosilicon, and 250% to 49,100 tonnes of silicon manganese. Overall ferroalloy production doubled to 131,700 tonnes.

The country’s two manganese concentrate producers, the Ordzhonikidze and Marhanets mining and beneficiation plants, which PrivatBank also controls, produced 846,500 tonnes of concentrate between them in January-July – 110% more than they produced in the same period of last year.