Severstal

Russian steel and mining company

Severstal (Северсталь) is a Russian company mainly operating in the steel and mining industry, headquartered in Cherepovets. Severstal is listed on the Moscow Exchange and LSE and is the largest steel company in Russia. The company is majority owned and controlled by billionaire Alexey Mordashov. Severstal owns major industrial facilities in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, France, and Italy, as well as in several African countries. The company also has mining assets, thus securing its supply of raw materials. Severstal also owns Severstal Cherepovets, a professional ice hockey club which plays in the Kontinental Hockey League and Severstal Air Company, an airline operating mainly from Vnukovo International Airport and Cherepovets Airport. Severstal has been ranked as among the 16th best of 92 oil, gas, and mining companies on indigenous rights and resource extraction in the Arctic. It's ranked 37 among the largest steel makers. In 2021, Severstal was ranked no. 27 out of 120 oil, gas, and mining companies involved in resource extraction north of the Arctic Circle in the Arctic Environmental Responsibility Index (AERI). In 2021, the company's revenue amounted to 770 billion rubles.

During the early 1930s, deposits of iron ore were discovered on the Kola Peninsula and, at about the same time large quantities of coal were discovered in the area of Pechora. These two factors made it possible to establish a viable steel industry in the northwest of Russia. In 1940, the Government of the Soviet Union published a resolution "On The Organisation of Steel Making in the North West of the USSR", which created a steel mill in Cherepovets, a city accessible by both the Leningrad Ekaterinburg railway and by the Volga–Baltic Waterway. In 1947, the construction of Cherepovets Steel Mill was completed. Facility construction accelerated after the end of World War II, and at 3:25 PM on 24 August 1955, the Cherepovets steel mill was put into operation. Development continued in the following decades, making Cherepovets a major centre of steel production in the Soviet Union. On 24 September 1993, a decree by the President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, transformed the state owned Cherepovets Iron and Steel Complex into the Severstal open joint stock company.

On February 11, 2013, the company's Vorkutinskaya mine, in the Komi Republic in northern Russia, experienced an explosion that caused the mine to collapse on a team of 22 people. A total of 18 people lost their lives in the accident. In March 2012, the company separated from Nord Gold. In 2014, Severstal divested its steelmaking operations in the United States, selling the former Rouge Steel plant in Dearborn, Michigan to AK Steel Holding for $700 million, and its mini mill in Columbus, Mississippi, built in 2007, to Steel Dynamics for $1.63 billion. In January 2017, the company sold Redaelli Tecna. In July 2017, the company acquired the debt of the Yakovlevsky mine. In December 2021, according to group's decarbonization strategy, Severstal agreed to sell "Vorkutaugol" to "Russkaya energia" LLC for 15 billion roubles. The approval of the deal was postponed by Federal Antimonopoly Service in February 2022.

Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the European Union placed sanctions on Severstal's majority shareholder, Alexey Mordashov, on 28 February. This forced the company to cease its steel shipments to Europe. Along with other major Russian corporations, in 2023 Severstal was included in the sanctions lists of Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. According to the British authorities, "PJSC Severstal is and has been obtaining a benefit from or supporting the Government of Russia by carrying on business in a sector of strategic significance, namely the Russian extractives sector and; (2) PJSC Severstal is owned or controlled directly or indirectly by a person involved in obtaining a benefit from or supporting the Government of Russia, namely Alexey Mordashov." According to the Australian authorities, measures against Severstal and other sanctioned companies "aim to slow Russia’s war machine."