Novolipetsk Steel (NLMK), Russia's largest steelmaker, sees opportunity for further development outside Russia, where the market is "too small," according to the company's top executive.
"The Russian market is too small for us, we can't achieve our growth goals in this market, considering [the slow] rate of its growth," Oleg Bagrin, NLMK's chief executive officer, said.Bagrin said NLMK expects that Russia's 2018 steel consumption will increase by 1.5-2%, and the country's long-term growth rate will be around just 1%.In 2017, Russia consumed 39.2 million tonnes of steel, according to the World Steel Association (Worldsteel). It is the ninth-largest steel-consuming country in the world. NLMK produced 13.2 million tonnes of crude steel at its steelmaking plant in Lipetsk in 2017,...