After Losing Azovstal, Where Has Ukraine’s Steel Been Made?

According to figures compiled by the World Steel Association (worldsteel), Ukraine’s crude steel production was 21.4 million tonnes in 2021, ranking 14th in the world. In 2022, it fell to 6.3 million tonnes, a 70.7% drop from the year before. In 2025 it was 7.4 million tonnes, ranking 23rd in the world.

Production falling to roughly a third of its former level was not the result of every plant uniformly cutting output. Some plants were located in cities occupied by Russia and were removed entirely from Ukraine’s production. The plants that remained kept operating under attack. And in the summer of 2026, even those remaining plants were shut down by attacks.

This article traces which plants have made Ukraine’s steel, using disclosures from the World Steel Association, industry associations, and companies. Company production figures and damage reports are each company’s own statements.

National Production

For 2026, Ukraine’s steel industry association, Ukrmetalurgprom, has published figures for January–August: 4.30 million tonnes of crude steel (87.5% of the same period the previous year), 4.35 million tonnes of pig iron (85.2%), and 3.59 million tonnes of rolled steel products (84.4%) (September 8, 2026).

Where steel fits within Ukraine’s industry as a whole, and how the scope of the statistics has changed, is covered in Ukraine’s Industries in Wartime — the Weight of Agriculture, Manufacturing, Services, and Energy. This article looks at what lies inside those figures, plant by plant.

The Two Steel Plants in Mariupol

The steel and mining group Metinvest owned the Azovstal and Illich steel plants in the port city of Mariupol.

According to the company’s 2021 annual report, its crude steel production that year was 9.533 million tonnes, of which Azovstal and Illich together cast 8.224 million tonnes of slabs (semi-finished product before rolling). Compared with the national crude steel production of 21.4 million tonnes that year, this was nearly 40%.

The company’s 2022 annual report introduces Azovstal as follows: founded in 1933, with a site of about 10 square kilometers on the port city’s waterfront, and about 11,000 employees at the start of 2022. Before the invasion it produced more than 4 million tonnes of crude steel a year and was also Ukraine’s only rail manufacturer. It states that steel from the plant was also used in the New Safe Confinement, the new structure enclosing the Chornobyl nuclear power plant.

According to the same report, Metinvest moved Azovstal and the Illich plant into a state it calls “hot conservation” in late February 2022, halting production. Mariupol was subsequently occupied, and the company lost operational control of its assets there, including both plants. The report states that Azovstal became the center of an 80-day siege, with thousands of soldiers and several hundred civilians taking shelter in its underground passages.

The company wrote off the full value of both plants’ assets in its 2022 accounts. A note to the financial statements in the 2025 annual report states that, from 2022 into early 2023, bankruptcy proceedings began for Azovstal, the Illich plant, and a machine-repair plant in Mariupol, as subsidiaries “with production facilities in temporarily occupied territory.”

After Azovstal, which Metinvest described as Ukraine’s only rail manufacturer, was shut down, rail exports from Japan to Ukraine appeared in trade statistics in 2024; this is covered in After Cigarettes and Iron Ore Disappeared: What Japan Now Buys From Ukraine. However, their use cannot be determined from the statistics.

The Plants That Have Kept Operating

According to Metinvest’s 2025 annual report, the steel plants it holds within Ukraine are Kamet Steel, in Kamianske, and Zaporizhstal, in the city of Zaporizhzhia (a joint venture in which the company holds a 49.99% stake).

Combined, the two plants’ 2025 crude steel production was 5.23 million tonnes, about 70% of the national total of 7.4 million tonnes compiled by the World Steel Association (this is only a rough guide, since the two totals come from different sources). Zaporizhstal’s crude steel production in 2021 was 3.889 million tonnes (per the company’s 2021 annual report). This means that, in Zaporizhzhia — a city its own executives describe as within reach of guided bombs and ballistic missiles — it was producing more than 80% of its 2021 volume in 2025.

Another major plant is ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih, in Kryvyi Rih, Dnipropetrovsk region. Part of the international steel group ArcelorMittal, it runs, according to its own website, everything from coke and iron-ore mining through sintering, blast furnaces, steelmaking, and rolling in one complex, producing long products such as reinforcing bar and wire rod. The company’s CEO, in an op-ed about the EU’s refusal to grant Ukraine a grace period under the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), wrote that it would lose the 1.25 million tonnes of exports to Europe planned for 2026 — nearly half its annual output — and would cut blast furnace production to the technical minimum.

What Happened on the Raw-Materials Side

Steelmaking needs coking coal, the raw material for coke, in addition to iron ore. Metinvest owned a coking-coal mine, Pokrovske Coal, in Pokrovsk, but according to its 2025 annual report, production there stopped at the end of 2024, making 2025 the first year the company produced no coking coal within Ukraine. In the same report’s market overview, it states that Ukraine’s blast-furnace steel plants are relying more heavily on imported coking coal and coke, because domestic coking coal can no longer be produced.

The coke plant at Avdiivka, in Donetsk region, stopped production in late February 2022 (per the 2022 annual report). The map in the 2025 annual report shows Avdiivka Coke and Pokrovske Coal, along with Azovstal and the Illich plant, as “occupied subsidiaries” or assets with “halted operations.”

In Summer 2026, the Remaining Plants Also Shut Down

According to Metinvest’s announcement of September 17, 2026, Zaporizhstal’s main equipment and power systems were damaged in a Russian ballistic missile attack on August 11, killing 8 employees and injuring 28, bringing operations to a complete stop. Attacks continued afterward on August 27, September 12, and September 17, and the company’s chief operating officer said a total of 17 ballistic missiles had been fired since August.

In an interview with the same executive that the company posted on September 16 (in the Ukrainian business magazine Forbes Ukraine), Kamet Steel also stopped operating due to attacks in August and September. The attacks on the two plants killed 13 employees and contractor workers and injured more than 40, it states. At the time of the interview, the company’s only major assets still operating within Ukraine were its two iron-ore beneficiation companies, Central Iron Ore and Northern Iron Ore, both running at 50% capacity, according to the executive.

The company has not given a timeline for restoring operations. In the same interview, it explains that this is compounded by Russia’s blockade of ports, which has halted seaborne exports, and by the EU’s import quotas on steel products, in effect since April.

A Note on Reading These Figures

• The decline from 2021 to 2025 includes the loss of the Mariupol plants, which became unable to operate due to occupation. This difference cannot be read simply as a result of lower utilization at the remaining plants.
• The production figures, damage, and operating status for each plant are the companies’ own statements. They are not figures confirmed by an independent body.
• The annual production figure for 2026 will change substantially depending on when Zaporizhstal and Kamet Steel resume operations.