In January-February, Karelsky Okatysh's, a Severstal subsidiary, output grew by 3 percent. Its shipment to consumers grew by 6 percent compared with the corresponding period in 2001. Over the first two months of 2002 the company produced 1.042 million tonnes of iron ore pellets and shipped 1.037 million tonnes to consumers. In February, the company produced 555,000 tonnes of pellets out of 582,000 tonnes of iron ore concentrate and shipped 532,000 tonnes of pellets to consumers.

The volume of extracted iron ore also grew by 8 percent. In February, Karelsky Okatysh mined 1.56 million tonnes of iron ore. In January-February, 3 million tonnes were quarried. Over the like period in 2001 removal of the mining mass grew by 1 percent. In February, 1.85 million tonnes were removed while over two months 3.9 million tonnes were removed. The concentrate production was at 1.1 million tonnes - a three percent increase as compared with the like period of 2001. Blasthole drilling increased by 20 percent to 138,000 rm. Mine blasting went up by over 26 percent to 3.9 million m³.

In February, Karelsky Okatysh caught up with the previous year's results. However, the volume of removed stripping rock in January-February was 2 percent lower than in the previous year and amounted to 2.9 million m³. This is the reason why the stripping ratio was also lower, although in the last two years it has been one of the highest in the industry. In January-February it was 0.95 cubic meters of removed stripping rock per tone of iron ore.

Increase in production output as compared with the corresponding period of the previous year was planned. In 2002, Karelsky Okatysh intends to increase its production by 200,000 tonnes reaching 6.8 million tonnes - a three percent increase over the previous year.