OREANDA-NEWS. On 13 July 2009 was announced, that such events organized by MMK in conjunction with its largest customers, have become a tradition. During the latest Coordination Council Meeting MMK and AVTOVAZ experts discussed the issue of the quality of MMK's supplies and the prospects of future cooperation. AVTOVAZ made a special note of an overall improvement of the quality of MMK's steel supplies to the auto-making giant, especially regarding steel used for AVTOVAZ cars' exterior parts.

The Council discussed the possibility and conditions of supplying the following products:

· cold-rolled and galvanized steel (of 006/IF grade) with standardized surface micro-topography for manufacturing exposed auto body parts;

· high-strength cold-rolled steel of the rephosphorized grades 08UP (Н220Р) and 08UPR (Н260Р);

· MMK's long products and

· metalware from MMK-METIZ.

Other quality issues discussed in detail included step-by-step product marking, MMK's proposals for improving packing methods, protection of steel from corrosion by using new conservation formulas, and the work of MMK's experts in OJSC AVTOVAZ's TekhnoPortal Internet system.

The Council also considered issues of further cooperation in adopting high-strength steels and the results of trials of the dual-phase (DP600) hot rolled steel for manufacturing wheel disks. According to AVTOVAZ experts' findings, wheels made of MMK's DP600 grade, had an average life 5.5 times longer than the accepted standard.

MMK is a long-time supplier of auto body sheet to such key Russian auto-makers as AVTOVAZ, GAZ, KAMAZ and others, having delivered over half a million tons of steel products to the automotive sector in 2008.