Evraz future faces questions in North America

Russia-based steelmaker Evraz, which has North American operations that include scrap-fed electric arc furnace (EAF) mills in Colorado, Oregon and Canada, has seen the value of its London Stock Exchange-listed stock plummet since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Feb. 24.

An early March report on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC) website indicates the company’s stock shares have lost some 90 percent of their value in the run-up to and especially after the Ukraine invasion.

A concerted and united effort by governments in Europe, North America and some other parts of the world to punish not only the Russian government but also banks and corporations considered friendly to the regime of Russia’s Vladimir Putin has caused the value of the nation’s currency and its stock market to plunge in value.

According to the CBC, the damage inflicted might not be over. “Ottawa isn’t ruling out sanctions against Russian-owned companies operating in Canada following the invasion of Ukraine—a list that could include the steelmaker Evraz, one of Regina [Sasketchewan]’s largest employers and whose majority shareholder is a Russian oligarch,” writes the news service.

The wealthy Russian in question, Roman Abramovich, owns a 28.6 percent stake in Evraz, according to the CBC. He has recently made news by offering to sell the Chelsea soccer club in the United Kingdom and donate the proceeds to humanitarian and rebuilding efforts in Ukraine.

According to the 2021 Recycling Today list of steelmaking melt shops, Evraz operates three steelmaking facilities in North America: a 1.1-million-tons-per-year plant in Pueblo, Colorado; an 840,000-tons-per-year plant in Portland, Oregon; and a 1.2-million-tons-per-year plant in Regina, Saskatchewan.

Regarding the near-term future of the Canadian mill, the CBC quotes Canada’s Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland as saying, “Everything is on the table and we are looking carefully at the holdings of oligarchs in Canada.”