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Exclusive interview of Interfax-Ukraine agency with Chief Executive Officer of Kryvyi Rih Mining and Metallurgical Plant ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih PJSC (AMKR, Dnipropetrovsk region) Mauro Longobardo

Text: Yuriy Guly

- ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih is actually located in the frontline zone, the city is often shelled by the occupiers, which affects the production processes of the company. What is the situation in the company in terms of production load now? What prevents us from increasing the production output?

- We are currently using approximately 30% of our capacity for HM, steel, and finished products. But at some points it was not so. From April to August, we worked with two furnaces because the economic situation was more favourable.

But in winter the situation is quite complicated, mainly because of electricity. Firstly, it is the availability of electricity supply due to attacks on the energy infrastructure. Secondly, it is the overpriced tariffs for it. Because of this, the cost of our products is higher than the price of finished products on the market. For these two reasons, currently, we will have only one blast furnace operating from November and I also think, until the end of winter, in Q1 of 2025. So, we can say that due to the security situation in metallurgy, we were able to return to 50% of our production in the middle of the year. At the same time, we are stably using about 70-75% of our pre-war capacities and producing 650-700 Kt of concentrate with 65% Fe content per month in mining production. At the same time, about 80% of iron ore concentrate went to our steel production before the war, and we exported about 20% to our sister company in Poland. Since less concentrate is used for steelmaking, we are