OREANDA-NEWS. December 16, 2010. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works, OJSC (MMK) shipped about 250,000 mt of rolled tubular products to domestic pipe producers in October 2010, 35% up from October 2009.

It has become the largest MMK’s monthly shipment recorded in 2010 and one of the largest deliveries in the recent years. In 2008, for instance, MMK was shipping an average of 138,547 mt per month and 127,113 mt in 2009. Ten months of 2010 have brought a monthly shipment tonnage up to 196,593 mt on average.

MMK’s major customers in the pipe-making industry are Seversky and Volzhsky pipe plants and Taganrog Metallurgical Works (all affiliated with JSC  TMK), Chelyabinsk Pipe Rolling Plant (ChTPZ Group) and Vyksa Steel Works (OMK Group).

Russian pipe plants that ship products to oil and gas sector have always been among MMK’s strategic partners. As a result, MMK has inked long-term partnership agreements with the key pipe market players. In addition to tubular products shipments, those agreements envisage taking joint efforts to introduce advanced technologies and new products designed by MMK for big-diameter pipes.

In 2008-2009, MMK annually shipped over 1.6 million mt of rolled products to pipe manufactures. In 2009, the share of hollow billets in the MMK’s domestic shipments grew to 37 percent compared to 26 percent a year earlier. Following the plan to increase production for the pipe industry MMK delivered some 250,000 mt of tube sheet in October of which over 100,000 mt were rolled at the Mill 5000. It is prognosed that MMK will have shipped the total of 2.3 million mt of rolled steel products to the pipe makers by the end of 2010.

The thick-plate Mill 5000 (with annual capacity of 1.5 million mt) was commissioned at MMK in July 2009 to primarily produce high-quality hollow billets for big-diameter pipes.