Today is the beginning of the navigation season at Severstal's industrial port. The first moored ship was loaded with 4,000 tonnes of metal intended for shipment to a Finnish client.
   This year navigation season began three days earlier than last year. The company intends to use the leeway to ship additional volumes of metal to export.
   Before the end of April Severstal's industrial port plans to ship 100,000 tonnes of metal, which is a twofold increase over last year's performance. Nearly all shipments in April will pass through the St. Petersburg sea port on the way to their foreign consumers. Just one ship will sail to Taganrog sea port.
   Severstal's preliminary plan is to ship 1.5 million tonnes through accessible riverways, which is 400,000 tonnes more than during last navigation season. The company plans to ship up to 250,000 of rolled steel a month. This is 80% of all export sales of Severstal.
   To assure regularity of steel delivery in the domestic market the company will begin to deliver metal via waterways to automotive plants such as UAZ (Uliyanovsk Automotive Plant), its subsidiary, and VAZ (Volgsk Automotive Plant) in May. According to Dmitry Goroshkov, Severstal's sales director, the company's experience with water shipment was good so far. In the Fall of last year it shipped metal to VAZ via river ways. " We plan to ship 20,000 of metal to automotive plants. This is one quarter of total monthly sales to our clients in the automotive industry," said Dmitry Goroshkov.
   During the 2001 navigation season Severstal shipped 1.1 million tonnes of steel, intended for export. Almost a quarter of that volume was shipped to clients in Germany, Finland, Great Britain directly - bypassing other ports, which assured that the cargo remained intact. It was estimated that Severstal saved several million dollars through direct supplies.
   To assure high quality of end products and to decrease the number of reclamations and possible losses Severstal hired SGS Vostok Ltd - an international surveyor - to control the quality of products from the point of production to the point of shipment.