Avdiyivka coke chemists help to restart Turkish Isdemir steel plant after earthquake

KYIV. March 2 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Veterans of the Avdiyivka Coke and Chemical Plant of the Metinvest group and the state-owned enterprise Koksokhimstantsiya helped their Turkish colleagues restart the coke-chemical unit of the Isdemir metallurgical plant, which had stopped after earthquakes in Turkey.

Overall, the earthquake in Turkey paralyzed a third of steel production capacity, according to a press release from Metinvest on Thursday.

The Isdemir Metallurgical Plant is one of the Turkish metallurgical plants that was damaged in the earthquake. The coke section at the enterprise was halted. Turkish specialists were not able to restart the critical resource on their own. Experts from Ukraine came to the rescue. The workers of the Avdiyivka Coke and Chemical Plant managed to reanimate the enterprise after its halt at the height of the war in Donbas. Mindful of the unique experience of Ukrainian colleagues, the management of Isdemir turned to Musa Magomedov, the former director general of the Avdiyivka Coke Plant, for help.

“Avdiyivka Coke Plant is a unique example of maintaining production in the conditions of hostilities. Before the full-scale invasion, due to constant shelling, the city of Avdiyivka and the plant itself were often left without power supply. The plant stopped and resumed work 15 times, and was without power over 200 times. There were no such precedents in the world before, because there were no instructions and an algorithm for restarting production,” MP of Ukraine Magomedov quoted by the press service.

According to him, the Avdiyivka coke oven chemists developed a special algorithm in the conditions of hostilities, which reduced to a minimum the time of taking coke oven batteries for hot mothball – from four days to four hours. Despite all the difficulties, the plant remained one of the largest enterprises in the industry in Europe, continued to supply Ukraine with high-quality coke and chemical products.

“Immediately after the earthquake, the leadership of Isdemir asked for help, taking into account the colossal experience of the Avdiyivka workers gained in the conditions of nine years of war. We immediately reacted. The very next day, expert Dmytro Fomin went to help his colleagues, fellow experts Yuriy Yeremeev, Semen Kaufman, Oleksandr Maslov-Bering were in touch with him daily,” Magomedov said.

After serious joint preparation, we managed to load the batteries, give out the first coke and start the blowers.

“Today, the Isdemir plant is returning to the production of coke products. We did it together with the Avdiyivka coke chemists. We solved our problems and succeeded. For now, we are increasing production. We are sincerely grateful for the help to our Ukrainian colleagues,” Isdemir plant’s manager Bülent Büyükünal said.