OREANDA-NEWS. July 04, 2012. Severstal, one of the world's leading vertically integrated steel and steel-related mining companies, announces that the Cherepovets Steel Mill, one of the world’s largest integrated steelmaking plants and part of the Severstal Russian Steel division, plans to increase deliveries of hot dip galvanized rolled products to GAZ Group, Russia's Largest Automotive Engineering Holding, in 2012.

GAZ Group, one of the Cherepovets Steel Mill’s major clients, accounts for more than 73% of its total deliveries of rolled products, and in excess of 100,000 tons were shipped to GAZ Group enterprises between July 2011 and May 2012.

Dmitry Goroshkov, Sales Director at the Cherepovets Steel Mill commented: “The automobile industry is one our major focuses. We are hugely committed to ensuring that we provide a full service to meet the needs of our clients such as GAZ.”

Currently, ОАО GAZ uses the Cherepovets Steel Mill’s hot dip galvanized rolled stock in the manufacturing of 56 parts of the Gazel-business underbody. There are plans to increase the number of parts in the Gazel-business underbody using Severstal’s metal for an even wider product range of vehicles in 2012. Those include vehicles GAZel-NEXT and buses LIAZ , PAZ and GolAZ .

The Cherepovets Steel Mill is also exploring the possibility of supplying its rolled high-strength steel grades for joint projects undertaken by ОАО GAZ with its partners, including Volkswagen and General Motors, initially on a trial basis.  The trial was discussed at a meeting between GAZ Group and Severstal held in Cherepovets. The companies’ representatives discussed deliveries of metal products for exterior automotive parts, frames and wheel disks initially over a five month period in 2012.

At the meeting, representatives of GAZ Group also commended the high quality of the Cherepovets Steel Mill’s products and expressed their desire for a long-term relationship between the companies.