NLMK has held talks with TMK over increasing the tonnage of hot rolled coil it supplies to the pipemaker, as part of its strategy to hike shipments to Russia’s OCTG sector.

Last year the two firms agreed to cooperate on supplying products to oil and gas producers. NLMK now supplies 20% of TMK’s coil requirement versus 9% in 2014. Representatives from the two firms held this week their first coordination board meeting at TMK’s Tagmet plant. They discussed delivery terms, an increase in production, expansion of product mix and requirements of customers in the CIS and beyond.

“The OCTG segment is a strategic market for NLMK in Russia,” says NLMK vice president sales Ilya Guschin in a statement sent to Kallanish. “In the last two years, NLMK has increased sales to this segment almost two-fold up to 14%, and we are strengthening our presence in this market. We are pleased to see that TMK has become our reliable partner.”

“Our cooperation with NLMK is expanding; we are increasing the volume of delivery and expanding the product mix,” says TMK deputy ceo procurement Sergey Marchenko. “Today, Tagmet has shown unprecedented results, processing all required types of coils. Mainly, this applies to furnace butt-welding. At the moment, we are considering an increase in purchasing across the entire product range.”

NLMK’s Russian Long Products unit – including billet – increased external sales 10% on-year in the first quarter to 625,000 tonnes. The Russian Flat Products unit – which includes slab – hiked sales 3% to 2.46 million tonnes. TMK’s Russian division recorded a 2.4% on-year increase in shipments in Q1 to 741,000t.