Russian steel maker NLMK restarts blast furnace

MOSCOW May 8 (Reuters) - Novolipetsk Steel (NLMK.MM), Russia's fourth-largest steel maker, restarted its last idle blast furnace after a five-month overhaul costing 180 million roubles ($5.5 million), the company said on Friday. Novolipetsk, controlled by billionaire Vladimir Lisin, said the restart of the 1.7 million-tonne-per-year No 4 blast furnace followed the resumption in February of two blast furnaces with capacities of 1.6 million and 770,000 tonnes per year.

"Currently, NLMK's main production site is running all five blast furnaces. Steel production in Lipetsk in 2009 is expected to reach 8.3 million tonnes," the company said in a statement.

Novolipetsk, or NLMK, produced 8.5 million tonnes of crude steel at its main plant in Lipetsk last year, down 6 percent from 2007. The group's total production was 10.4 million tonnes. (Reporting by Robin Paxton)