OJSC Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works ("MMK", or "the Company") (LSE: MMK) today celebrates the 85^th anniversary of the launch of its Magnitogorsk mill. On 1 February 1932 the mill’s first blast-furnace produced its first batch of pig iron. This date has come to be celebrated as marking the launch of MMK – one of the largest metal facilities in Russia and globally.

Over 85 years, MMK in total mined more than 430 million tonnes of ore, produced more than 700 million tonnes of sinter, 614 million tonnes of pig iron, 791 million tonnes of steel, and 633 million tonnes of finished metal products. If all the steel it produced over this time was set out in sheet form, 0.5 mm thick, it would cover around 200,000 square meters – an area larger than Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, and Switzerland combined.

MMK is holding a number of special celebratory events in Magnitogorsk to thank its current and former employees.

MMK has always been the flagship of the metals industry in Russia. When it launched in 1932, it was the largest metal mill in the world. It also played a major role for the USSR during World War II – supplying the steel needed as armor for every second Soviet tank, and in the production of every third shell.

In the late 1990s, MMK launched a major investment programme to upgrade production. It built state-of-the-art high-efficiency production facilities focused on producing highly-competitive metal products for both domestic and international markets. Its steelmaking facilities were radically updated. The long product rolling mill was restored, modern facilities for producing galvanized and polymer-coated metal were built. In the past decade, MMK launched a thick plate mill and a new cold-rolling mill (Mill 2000) to produce cold-rolled and galvanized steel for the automotive industry.

In 2016, the company produced over 12.5 million tonnes of crude steel and more than 11.3 million tonnes of commercial steel products.