During his working visit to Izhevsk, Vladimir Putin pressed a symbolic red button to launch a new electric steel-making facility at Izhstal Plant. The facility comprises an electric arc furnace and a continuous casting machine that pours carbon, alloyed, stainless steel and special steels into moulds.

The total cost of the project is 3.8 billion roubles. The enterprise is also implementing a programme to modernise production capacity, including steel rolling. The total amount of capital investment is 5.8 billion roubles.
The new steel-making facility will increase the output of rolled steel to 465,000 tons a year, or by 40%, which will meet the needs of the country's defence, automobile, aircraft, space and construction industries for special steel brands.

Izhstal's production complex meets all the modern requirements that consumers present, the plant's managing director Valery Moiseyev told the prime minister. He said that as a result of the modernisation and the replacement of outdated open-hearth furnaces with new electric steel-making facilities all the technical and economic performance indicators, including emissions into the atmosphere, have been improved.

"Prior to modernisation emissions exceeded 6,600 tons, and now they have dropped by more than 5,300 tons to 1,200 tons," Mr Moiseyev said. "A substantial drop," the prime minister responded approvingly.

Mr Putin also looked at samples of Izhstal's products, including blanks for small arms. He was shown steel rifle barrels made before the Russian Revolution of 1917, which are now exhibits at the plant's museum. The prime minister held one in his hands and read the tag, which said that the barrels had been twisted into a spiral to prove the viscosity of the steel.