UKRAINIAN METALLURGY: MILKING IT TO DEATH

PHOTO: fotoklumba.lviv.ua

In Ukraine, 23% of steel is smelted in open-hearth furnaces. This technology was new and fresh in 1864. All countries that produce steel, besides Russia, stopped using open-hearth furnaces more than 10 years ago. The share of “open-hearth steel” in Russia is 2.6% of the total amount of steel.

No one is smelting steel in this way anymore, except Ukraine and Russian!

In 2007- 2009 the steel industry was finally divided between major Ukrainian and Russian financial-industrial groups.

At that period in other countries, business owners were investing in modernization. A lot of our business owners were:

• building schemes where the final seller to foreign markets was an offshore company;
• playing with the schemes of VAT refunding;
• demanding support from the state;
• buying the assets.