The global steel market has markedly changed. Firstly, it became much bigger – from 500 million t to more than1,600 million t over the past 50 years. Secondly, it is shifting towards the East from previously dominated Europe andthe USA to South Korea, Japan and China now; in the future India will be a big player there as well. Thirdly, technologyhas changed and it has improved the industry’s productivity. The first significant change was in 1980?1990. Previouslyit was ingot casting which involved reheating and rerolling and therefore was not a continuous process. The industryshifted towards continuous casting and that made a huge difference. It almost tripled the output of steel per worker inindustry. It was a huge production productivity improvement in our industry. In addition, almost at the same time wealso had a shift from blast furnace technology to electric arc furnace technology mainly in the US. Whereas continuouscasting technology was taking place everywhere, in Ukraine it took a little bit longer. Although Ukraine still has someopen hearth furnaces in Kryvyi Rih they are disappearing nowadays.
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