OREANDA-NEWS. February 25, 2011. Evraz Group (LSE: EVR) (“Evraz”) announces plans to consolidate two of its Russian steel mills, "ZSMK" and "NKMK". The enterprise will be named Evraz – Consolidated West Siberian Metallurgical Combination.

This step will allow simplification of managerial processes and formulation of single standards in the sphere of health safety and environment, railway, automobile and warehouse logistics, procurement, social policy and human resources management. The consolidated enterprise will complete a large scale modernisation of the rail and beam production and will produce globally competitive 100-metre differentiated thermo-strengthened rails. It will also implement a number of large projects which will introduce new technologies in steel-making production, expand the construction product line group and introduce the pulverised coal injection technology into blast furnaces. The annual capacity of the consolidated enterprise will amount to 6 million tonnes of pig iron, 8.5 million tonnes of steel and more than 7.3 million tonnes of steel rolled products.

"The ongoing modernisation of the consolidated enterprise will allow Evraz to become one of the world leaders in production of long products for transportation which are also necessary within the context of implementation of the federal programme by Russian Railways on the development of high speed transportation. The consolidation will allow us not only to cut costs but also to introduce single approaches in the sphere of health safety and environment, human resources management, social policy, logistics and procurement ", - said Alexey Ivanov, Evraz Group’s Vice President – Head of Steel Division.