Evraz obtains UK’s approval to sell North American steel mills

Author Fast Webs<“>.> |

* Sale to close in second half of 2025 * Mills could not share profits with Evraz * Furnaces shut on Chinese expansion

Summary:
Evraz, has received UK approval to sell its North American assets—including mills in the U.S. and Canada—by late 2025. The sale was triggered by sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which blocked Evraz from accessing profits from these mills since 2022. Despite being UK-registered, it has become one of the most heavily sanctioned metallurgical companies.

The division’s current performance is not disclosed, but pre-Russia-Ukraine war of 2021, Evraz made 1.88 million mt of crude steel and 1.66 million mt of steel products at its mills in the US and Canada, which offer plates, rails, large-diameter, and OCTG pipes. Evraz was also adding a long-product mill at Pueblo to produce 100-meter rails using solar power.

Evraz is also scaling back production in Russia due to global oversupply.

Article:
Evraz has obtained a license from the UK HM Treasury’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation for the sale of the company’s North America business, a spokesperson for the Russian mining and steel company told Platts July 1.

The sale is expected to finalize in the second half of 2025, three years after the company launched the process to sell the Evraz North America unit comprising Canadian mills Regina, Camrose, and Calgary, US mills Pueblo and Portland, and technology centers in both countries in August 2022.

Sanctions were the reason why Evraz decided to sell its North American mills. As a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it has become one of the most heavily sanctioned metallurgical companies, although its business was registered in the UK. For that reason, the solicitation process had to be conducted under a certain license issued by OFSI, and the transaction itself requires its approval, among other authorities.

The division’s current performance is not disclosed, but in the last pre-Russia-Ukraine war of 2021, Evraz made 1.88 million mt of crude steel and 1.66 million mt of steel products at its mills in the US and Canada, which offer plates, rails, large-diameter, and OCTG pipes. Evraz was also adding a long-product mill at Pueblo to produce 100-meter rails using solar power.

“Captive rolling capacities in the EU and the US allowed Russian companies to supply semis that have been processed into finished products at their own mills in these markets,” an industry analyst said. “Evraz, on the one hand, lost this opportunity in 2022, but on the other hand, its US assets benefited from the country’s steel import tariffs, which allowed them to function independently. The issue is that Evraz has been unable to make use of those mills’ revenues since 2022, and so it has taken three years to negotiate their sale, including how to transact the proceeds from it.”

In 2021, the US imported 1.2 million mt of semi-finished steel products from Russia and the same annual average volume in the two pre-COVID pandemic years of 2018-2019, but already in 2023, 2024 and 2025, these imports fully terminated, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence’s Global Trade Analytics Suite.

This spring, Evraz said it would mothball one of the two basic oxygen furnace shops at its West Siberian Iron & Steel Works, or Zapsib, and put on standby one of the plant’s three blast furnaces. However, the analyst did not link this steel capacity cutback to the loss of synergies or the disposal of the North American mills. “It’s just that no one needs so many semi-finished steel products amid Chinese steel expansion,” the analyst said.

Since 2022, most Russian steel companies that owned production sites in Western countries have had to sell them. In early 2023, Russian steel pipe manufacturer TMK sold its billet casting and pipe rolling mills, Resita and Slatina, in Romania, and in April of the same year, steel major Severstal completed the sale of its Latvia-headquartered steel processing and distribution business.

Peer company NLMK continues to keep hold of its steel rerolling mills in Belgium, France, Denmark and Italy through its NLMK Belgium Holdings joint venture with a Belgian state-affiliated investment fund. But this is largely because the EU, although suspended purchases of most Russian steel products in 2022, introduced sanctions-deferred quotas for imports of Russian semi-finished steel, and in December 2023, extended the temporary ban exemption for its imports of NLMK-made slab to Sept. 30, 2028 with the quota approved for the year of Oct. 1, 2024 through Sept. 30, 2025 totaling 3.2 million mt.

Platts, part of Commodity Insights, assessed Russian and CIS-origin slab price at $420/mt FOB Black Sea on June 25; the assessment has been largely stable over the first half of the year, although it has come off by $15/mt compared with the year-start. Over the same time, FOB Black Sea billet assessment has been more volatile with $452/mt peak in March and $423/mt dip in May, but at $434/mt on July 1, it has become largely aligned with its $439/mt level at the beginning of January.