| Illich Iron & Steel Works | |
| Native Name: | Маріу́польський металургі́йний комбіна́т і́мені Ілліча́ |
| Type: | Joint Stock Company |
| Foundation: | 1897 |
| Location City: | Mariupol |
| Location Country: | Ukraine |
| Key People: | Volodymyr Boyko (CEO) |
| Industry: | Metallurgical |
| Products: | See products |
| Revenue: | 2.5 billion € (15%)[1] |
| Net Income: | 200 million € (44%) |
| Num Employees: | 14,000 (2022) |
| Homepage: | ilyich.com.ua |
Illich Iron & Steel Works (Ukrainian: Маріу́польський металургі́йний комбіна́т і́мені Ілліча́ – literally "Mariupol Metallurgical Plant named after Illich") is the second largest metallurgical enterprise in Ukraine, after Kryvorizhstal. It is located in Mariupol. According to NPR, the company had a workforce of 14,000 in early 2022.[2]
The works produce a wide assortment of hot-rolled and cold-rolled steel, including for shipbuilding, oil pipeline, boring gas pipeline and water pipes. The company is the sole enterprise of Ukraine that produces galvanized steel and tanks for liquid gases.
The products of the company are certified by international classification societies: the Lloyd's Register (Great Britain, Germany), U.S. Bureau of Naval Personnel, the Marine register of navigation (Russia), the German certification center TTSU, etc. The company exports the products to more than 50 countries of the world.
The enterprise has received the following awards:
On April 19, 1896, the Americans Rothstein and Smith were given permission from the Russian government to establish the Nikopol-Mariupol Mining and Metallurgical Society. The year 1897 is considered the year of establishment of today's Illich Mariupol steel and iron works, when in Mariupol was mounted and gave out the first products pipe workshop of Nikopol-Mariupol mining- metallurgical society.
The location of the factory in Mariupol was advantageous from a geographical position due to the proximity of raw materials and fuel resources, presence of the marine auction port and labor force of peasants from the nearby villages. The factory broadened in the beginning the twentieth age to become a major metallurgical enterprise in the South of Russia.
It is finally picked up thread after World War I and the Civil War in 1927, the factory began to develop as a comprehensive machine-building enterprise. The factory received its modern name in the 1920s when the Petrograd sovnarkom confiscated all of the property from the previous owners during the nationalization of all the industry in the region and to commemorate the leader of the October Revolution, Vladimir Lenin. Later its powers of operating productions were broadened and new subdivisions were built: new-pipe, thick-sheet, sheet-finishing workshops, a number of other workshops.
In 1941, the enterprise passes to the issue of defensive types of products, including armor plating for the tank T-34, production of which was mastered at the plant before World War II. During the war, the most valuable equipment was dismantled and it was sent on to the factories in the Urals and Siberia, and the blast-furnace and martin stoves were put out of action. After the liberation of Mariupol at the end of 1944, the plant only had 70% of its production power, but it almost immediately started shipping armored steel to the war front.
Between 1954–1969 the company experienced its second birth. The reconstruction of the high furnaces was conducted at this time; three more high furnaces were built, as long as a martin workshop with the highest number of stoves in the world, an oxygen-converter workshop, squeezing-steel workshop 1150, workshops for hot and cold rolling, an agglomerative factory (the largest in Europe) and a complex of workshops for auxiliary production. The first products in 1983 – strips for production of large diameter pipes – brought a thick-sheet workshop 3000, one of the most modern in Europe.
The company got the powerful impulse of development in the last decade. The enterprise built several new facilities, including an electric-welded pipe and limekiln department, two machines for continuous casting of purveyances, setting for the complex lapping of steel and energetic block in a converter to the workshop, modernisation and reconstruction of equipment is conducted in most base workshops.
An important event in the history of the enterprise took place in November 2000, when the Ukrainian Parliament passed the Act "About the features of privatisation of JSC "Illich Mariupol iron and steel works", according to which the collective got the right to count itself the proprietor of the enterprise.
Before 2016, the plant was named after communist leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.[3] On 25 April 2016 due to decommunization laws in Ukraine it was "renamed" in honour of scientist Zot Illich Nekrasov, so it is still called Маріупольський металургійний комбінат імені Ілліча (literally – Mariupol Metallurgical Plant named after Illich).[4] Due to the change in name attribution, Mariupol citizens started to call it "Plant after not-that-Illich".[5]
In March 2022, the plant was severely damaged during the Siege of Mariupol during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[6] Russian forces stormed the plant on April 13.[7]