On a grassy plain an hour’s drive southwest of Moscow, Vladimir Lisin has started producing steel at a newly completed plant. That’s something that rival metals billionaire Lakshmi Mittal hasn’t achieved in Europe.

 

The mill, opened July 23 in Kaluga by Lisin’s OAO Novolipetsk Steel, can turn scrap into 900,000 metric tons a year of products for construction, just as Moscow and the surrounding regions build skyscrapers, homes and railroads and prepare for the 2018 soccer World Cup.

 

While ArcelorMittal’s chief executive officer has been mothballing plants from Poland to Spain, Russia is saving its industry with projects that will underpin 4.4 percent growth in steel demand this year, said Dmitry Kolomytsyn, a Morgan Stanley analyst. That matches the bank’s estimate for Brazil and beats the World Steel Association’s 2014 forecasts of 3.3 percent growth for Europe and a 2.9 percent increase in the U.S.

 

“Russia is a unique place right now, where demand for construction steel is heating up overall consumption because of the boom in development,” Kolomytsyn said recently. “You don’t find it in Europe.”