OREANDA-NEWS  On 20 November was announced, that Zaporizhstal steelmaker (PFTS: ZPST) suspended its investments into new capacities construction. Particularly, it mothballed the projects for construction of steel smelting department and hydrochloric acid pickling line. Meanwhile, the company continues constructing its coal-dust fuel injection complex that will enable the producer to abandon natural gas consumption in the blast-furnace practice, and to reduce its overall consumption across the plant by 48%.

At the same time, Zaporizhstal is going to benefit from its partial production suspension and to perform major repairs on its tandem smelting furnace No. 1 in the open-hearth department by 2009. We would like to remind the reader that earlier the company shut down 4 in 9 of its open-hearth furnaces.