Avdiyivka Coke Plant will be impossible to restore after war, says Metinvest CEO
Due to shelling by the Russian army, it will be impossible to rebuild the Avdiyivka Coke Plant after the war, CEO of Metinvest Yuriy Ryzhenkov said in an interview with Forbes.
"The plant is under the control of the Ukrainian army. It was repeatedly fired upon by Russia. They pounded it with everything they had. I think it will be impossible to restore the plant," Ryzhenkov said.
In the form in which the plant was before the invasion, it will hardly need to be rebuilt, the general director of the holding noted.
OJSC Avdiyivka Coke Plant (ACP) is the largest coke plant in Ukraine. Before Russia's full-scale invasion, the plant produced more than 30 types of products, the main one being coke for metallurgy. Avdiyivka Coke Plant accounted for up to 20% of the country's blast furnace coke output. In 2007, the plant produced over 3 million tons of coke.
Among the consumers of ACP products were Ukrainian enterprises, companies from Russia, Moldova, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Turkey, Egypt and other countries.
About 7,000 people worked at ACP.
The Avdiyivka Coke Plant is part of the Metinvest group, which runs the mining and metallurgical business of the SCM group of the Ukrainian businessman and politician Rinat Akhmetov.
OJSC ACP owns more than 99% of the shares of OJSC Krasnodonvuhillya.
The largest consumers of coke of the Avdiyivka Coke Plant were Azovstal and Illich Steel and Iron Works, the restoration of which is not discussed in the foreseeable future, "until Ukraine has returned to Mariupol."
The company plans to restore Azovstal, but it will be a completely different plant, says Ryzhenkov. In his opinion, after the end of the war, metallurgy will remain a part of Mariupol, but will no longer be its basis.
As a result of the Russian war in Ukraine, at least 70 enterprises of Rinat Akhmetov's Metinvest group were affected. On June 27, 2022, the businessman filed a lawsuit against Russia at the ECtHR for damage to his property in Mariupol, and in October of the same year, his enterprises followed suit.
Forbes estimated that Akhmetov lost $8.8 billion of net worth since the start of the full-scale war.
On December 6, the Commercial Court of Donetsk Oblast approved the register of creditors in the bankruptcy case of Yenakiyeve Coke Plant – one of Akhmetov's enterprises, over which he lost control due to the Russian occupation.
On November 7, 2023, the last 16 workers, who ensured its preservation, were evacuated from the Avdiyivka Coke Plant.
At the beginning of December, the Russian military announced that they had advanced to the territory of the Avdiyivka Coke Plant. However, the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Ukrainian authorities in Avdiyivka denied this.