NLMK Group's Q3 2014 highlights include the announcement of a group capacity utlisation rate of 96% and 100% at the company's main production site in Lipetsk.
The company has reported a 9.5% quarter-on-quarter rise in steel output to 4.1Mt but has announced a 2.4% decrease in total sales to 3.7Mt, claiming the latter figure was 'due to the fact that a part of long products was sold through sales channels with longer periods of revenue recognition'.
A positive pricing trend in the pig iron market has seen NLMK's semis sales growing by 11.3% to 1.18Mt. Sales gret to 151kt in Q3 2014 compared with just 4kt in Q3 2013. Planned maintenance work at the company's Lipetsk rolling mill, however, resulted in rolled products sales falling by 7.7% quarter-on-quarter to 2.56Mt.
Over a nine-month period, the group's steel output rose by 3.9% to 11.8Mt with group sales up 1.6% year-on-year to 11.4Mt. Sales to the Russian market grew 15% year-on-year to 4.9Mt.
Looking ahead to Q4 2014 and NLMK expects steel and rolled product output to decrease slightly due to planned maintenance activity because of the seasonal slow down in domestic steel demand.
