The Russian company Eclant has announced that it has presented its green steel project at the Innoprom exhibition in Yekaterinburg. The plant, currently under construction in Vyksa, Nizhny Novgorod region, is scheduled to begin in the fourth quarter of 2026.
According to the company, the project will be the first metallurgical plant in Russia to use direct iron reduction (DRI) technology in combination with an electric arc furnace (EDP) for steel production of this scale. The company will produce steel from DRI pellets using natural gas, while carbon dioxide and sulfur oxide emissions are expected to be almost three times lower than in traditional blast furnace production.
The plant will produce 1.8 million tons of steel per year
The plant will have an annual production capacity of 1.8 million tons of steel and it will produce round blanks (blooms) and slabs. Most of the semi-finished products will be used to produce high-quality metal products for the oil and gas, transport and engineering sectors.
According to Anatoly Sedykh, the project uses rich Russian reserves of high-quality iron ore and natural gas, which makes it possible to produce steel with low environmental impact and competitive production costs. He stated that the use of 100% hot-metallized pellets with low sulfur and phosphorus content makes it possible to produce cleaner steel suitable for complex high-alloy grades.
A project to increase domestic consumption of raw materials
The project is expected to increase domestic consumption by about 1 billion cubic meters of natural gas and 3.5 million tons of iron ore pellets per year. After reaching full capacity, Eclant is expected to generate about 6.4 billion rubles in annual tax revenues and create more than 1,000 highly skilled jobs. The total investment in the project will amount to 190 billion rubles (2.49 billion US dollars).
Ecolant will operate without coke ovens, blast furnaces and converter steel production, using an integrated production chain in which hot DRI pellets will continuously flow into an electric arc furnace, and then to secondary metallurgy and two continuous casting machines. The company stated that the use of high-quality DRI pellets with a low level of impurities will make it possible to produce cleaner steel than is currently being produced.
