Nick Schifrin:
Ukraine's largest steel plant still faces the threat of Russian airstrikes.
In March, the war forced ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih to close for the first time since World War II. But now workers are back. And blast furnace number six is firing. The plant offers every step of a process that can produce six million tons of steel a year.
This is known as the foundry yard, where they take iron ore and put it through a blast furnace that is 4,000 degrees. That creates what's known as pig iron, a crude iron, and that becomes steel.
Before the war, the plant was one of Ukraine's largest employers and one of its largest exporters. Iron ore and semi-finished iron are the country's single largest export. But the war's cut production here in half, and it blocked the company's traditional routes to the Middle East and Africa, says chief administrative officer Artyom Filipyev.
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