Steel company SSAB (Sweden) and its subsidiary Ruukki Construction will provide charitable assistance in the form of roofing materials produced by Ruukki to restore houses damaged in Ukraine as a result of Russian aggression, the Ukrainian Steel Construction Center (UKCC) said in a press release on Monday.
Reportedly, the roofing materials will be made of SSAB steel at Ruukki’s plant in Ukraine. The roofing kit will include profiled sheets, strips and fasteners to restore damaged roofs of 85 homes.
This program will be implemented through the charity organization OperationAid.
Ruukki factory in Ukraine has 72 employees. Thanks to the support of Ruukki Corporation Ukraine resumed the work of the plant in the village of Kopylov and the work of the company as a whole since May 2022. Work is carried out on a limited schedule a few days a week, depending on the load lines and the availability of electricity.
SSAB is listed on the Nasdaq OMX Stockholm and Nasdaq OMX Helsinki stock exchanges. The company is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. SSAB has a total steelmaking capacity of 8.8 million tonnes per year in Sweden, Finland and the United States. SSAB has its own steel processing and fabrication facilities in China, Brazil and many other countries. SSAB employs 15,000 people in over 50 countries worldwide.
SSAB connects the biggest players in the national steel construction market. It currently encompasses more than 60 specialized companies.
The capacities of Ukrainian enterprises are sufficient to satisfy the need for roofing materials for the restoration of housing, social and critical infrastructure facilities affected by Russian aggression, Hanna Hontarenko, the acting director of the Ukrainian Steel Construction Center, told Interfax-Ukraine.
“Based on the results of work of the operational headquarters for the provision of construction materials in the Ministry of Regional Development, the needs of each region for roofing materials necessary for the restoration of housing, social and critical infrastructure have been determined. The internal potential of enterprises producing roofing materials in Ukraine allows us to meet these needs as soon as possible,” she said.
At the same time, the expert added that since the end of February 2022, the construction sector and the metallurgical industry have undergone significant changes.
“The destruction and occupation of the capacities of the largest metallurgical plants Azovstal and Illich Iron and Steel Works, a reduction in demand in the domestic market, an increase in the exchange rate and the cost of logistics – all these factors led to an increase in the cost of rolled metal. Since the beginning of the year, the price for certain assortment items has increased by more than 30%,” she said.
According to her, due to the aforementioned factors, steel structures manufacturers work with a low level of loading, however, due to stocks in warehouses and the work of metallurgical enterprises in Zaporizhia, Dnipro, Kryvy Rih, there is no shortage of rolled metal.
“But the situation will change when stocks are exhausted for certain assortment items that cannot be manufactured in Ukraine, and then demand will have to be met through imports,” the expert says.
As for the issue of steel roofing, the raw materials for it, namely rolled products, are produced by Zaporizhstal. Galvanizing and galvanizing/painting is carried out at the facilities of Unisteel LLC (the design capacity is 100,000 tonnes/year) or Modul-Ukraine LLC (the design capacity is 200,000 tonnes/year).
HOUSING, INFRASTRUCTURE, MANUFACTURERS, RAUTA, roofing materials
