The awarding ceremony of the Event of the Year in Russia’s Metallurgy took place in Moscow for the first time this year in the course of the annual international exhibition known as Metal Expo.

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) was awarded the prize for its contribution to the technological and innovational development of the metallurgical industry, which was made possible due to the launch of cold-roll Mill 2000. The exhibition’s coordinating committee observed that Mill 2000 was unique to Russia. Its produce is meant to meet the Russian car-makers and the foreign car manufacturers’ demand for high quality automobile body sheets that are in every way comparable with their best foreign counterparts.

‘MMK is the country’s oldest metallurgical business that has introduced the newest production facilities. We are proud of our achievements and we are ready for the new, no less significant, projects,’ MMK Deputy Director-General Nikolai Lyadov said when receiving the honorary certificate for the prize and the trophy, a figurine of a metal worker.

According to the coordinators of the metallurgical forum’s official statement, the prize winners were selected and approved of by the Metal Expo 2011 International Industrial Exhibition’s coordinating committee comprising representatives of metallurgical, construction, and machine-building associations, unions, and organizations as well as heads of scientific research organizations. The committee considered all the projects worth over $100m that were implemented in the metallurgical industry over the last year. Experts believe that the projects which won the Event of the Year prizes prove that the Russian metallurgical industry keeps upgrading at full speed.