OREANDA-NEWS.  February 13, 2014. Karelsky Okatysh, a major production and iron ore processing plant in Russia and part of OAO Severstal, one of the world’s leading steel and steel-related mining companies, has launched production of new iron ore pellets with a higher iron ore content.

The Cherepovets Steel Mill, part of Severstal’s Russian Steel division and one of the world’s largest integrated steel mills by capacity, will be their main customer.

Producing high quality iron ore pellets through separate ore processing is one Severstal’s key initiatives to improve efficiency in production. The new technology for producing high quality iron ore pellets underwent pilot testing in February and June 2013.

Mikhail Kondrakov, Head of iron ore concentrate and iron ore pellet production at Karelsky Okatysh, commented: “In the past we produced fluxed pellets with of up to 63.2% iron ore content, which fully satisfied our customers’ needs, but we have since raised the iron content to 64.3%. We began separately processing free-milling and refractory ores on February 1, and expect to be producing pellets with a 66% iron content by the end of the year.”

Mihail Gurkin, senior manager of pig iron technology development at Severstal’s Russian Steel division commented: “Using iron ore pellets with higher iron content will increase the profitability of our blast furnaces and help to decrease our raw material consumption. This will result in reduced pig iron production costs at CherMK. Using Karelsky Okatysh’s new product we expect to save an additional 286 million rubles a year.”