We will increase production from 15-20% to 33-35% with stabilization of water supply to plant, to 50% after repair of blast furnace No. 6 - ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih CEO

Exclusive interview of CEO of PJSC ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih (Dnipropetrovsk region) Mauro Longobardo to Interfax-Ukraine.

Text: Yuriy Guly

1. In mid-June after Russian occupiers blew up Kakhovska HPP dam ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih due to the problems with providing the plant with technical water reduced production to 15-20%. This forced the company to build a new pipeline for the city's water supply and full coverage of production needs. How is the water supply currently working and when will the plant resume production and to what extent? Recently, the press service reported that one blast furnace, four rolling mills, a converter shop and one CCM are currently in operation at the plant. Has the situation changed?

Of course, the situation with Kakhovska dam has created big issues. At the moment of that attack, we were operating with two blast furnaces. We thought that we could eventually extend the operation of two blast furnaces in parallel for a longer period of time and to keep the level of production between 40-50%. But, unfortunately, as soon as the dam was destroyed, the level of water in Kakhovska reservoir started reducing and because most of the water coming to Kryvyi Rih was pumped from there, we immediately suffered lack of water. At the time of the attack, we were consuming around 2500 cubic meters per hour of industrial water. And after the attack we actually got to a level of 900-1000 cubic meter per hour.

So in these conditions, we decided first of all to anticipate the capital maintenance of one of the blast furnaces. So in the first days after the attack we were operating only with one Blast Furnace - Blast Furnace No 8 and pig iron casters, which are actually connected to that, plus two coke batteries