OREANDA-NEWS. Mechel OAO (NYSE: MTL), one of the leading Russian mining and metals companies, reports that independent lab tests of rails produced at Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant confirmed their high quality and compliance with the most exacting international standards.

A batch of rails, of type R65 category DT350, produced at Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant for certification, successfully passed lab tests in Russian Railway Research Institute OAO.

The rails passed lab tests on all counts and is fully compliant with Russian Railways OAO's requirements. Lab tests confirmed the high quality of Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant's rails, including the rail steel's high level of purity on non-metallic inclusions. Bench tests of the rails for fatigue and crack resistance demonstrated that Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant's products are up to the finest international standard and excel over Russian analogues.

For the next stage of testing after lab tests, the rails were laid onto the experimental railroad ring that is used to test rails in real-life conditions over the next 6-7 months.

“A lot of preliminary work was done ahead of laying Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant's rails onto Railway Research Institute's experimental ring-road. Russian Railways OAO's commission examined the entire technological operation chain and confirmed that Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant has created a rail production facility that is up to state-of-the-art requirements for world-class products,” Mechel OAO's Chief Executive Officer Oleg Korzhov noted.

Currently, Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant's universal rolling mill has mastered production of two types of rails - R50 and R65. Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant has already signed several contracts with major Russian companies for rail supplies.

Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant's universal rolling mill, whose annual capacity is 1.1 million tonnes of end product, is a complex universal facility for production of high-quality structural shapes and rails of 12.5-100 meters in length. The project's implementation created a single production chain at Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant, from steelmaking to rolling and thermal treatment. This is the first such complex to be built in Russia. The project's cost topped 900 million US dollars.