In 2018, Ukrainian coking plants increased the production of blast furnace coke with 6% moisture content by 4.1% compared to 2017—up to 10.826 million tonnes.
In December 2018, a total of 924,000 tonnes of coke was produced while in November the coke production stood at 917,000 tonnes, the Dnipro-based Ukrkoks association of coking plants told the Kyiv-based Interfax-Ukraine news agency.
Ukrkoks Director General Anatoliy Starovoit said coke chemical plants worked as normal, providing metallurgical enterprises with coke according to the existing production plans.
“In January, the production has decreased to some extent compared to December because of a smaller number of orders and due to some technical reasons. However, the manufacturing enterprises have been supplied with blast furnace coke in full, there are no problems,” he said.
When asked about the plans for the entire 2019, Starovoit said that there are two forecasting options for producing coke in the association: at the level of 2018 and with a 5% increase.
“We have not yet received plans from iron smelters, so we have planned two scenarios for the production of coke. In January, the contracting process is taking place; therefore, later there will be a clearer picture of our production plans,” the director general said.
As reported earlier, in 2017, 14,289 tonnes of enriched coke coal was supplied to coke-chemical enterprises, of which 3.458 million tonnes accounted for Ukrainian production and 10.831 million tonnes were imported. The ratio of imported and Ukrainian coal was 78.8% to 24.2%. In particular, the imports arrived from the Russian Federation—6.3 million tonnes, the United States and Canada—3.923 million tonnes, Kazakhstan—377,000 tonnes, and the Czech Republic—187,000 tonnes.
