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Severstal (Russian: Северсталь, "Northern Steel") is a Russian company mainly operating in the steel and mining industry, centred in the northern city of Cherepovets. Severstal is listed on the Moscow Exchange and LSE. As of 2009, it is the largest steel company in Russia according to the Metal Bulletin. The majority of the company's stock belongs to Alexey Mordashov. Severstal owns major industrial facilities in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, France, and Italy, as well as in several African countries. The company also has mining assets, thus securing its supply of raw materials. Severstal also owns ''Severstal Cherepovets'', a professional ice hockey club which plays in the Kontinental Hockey League. Severstal company also owns an airline - Severstal Air, operating mainly from Vnukovo Moscow Airport and from its home base Cherepovets Airport. ==History== During the early 1930s, deposits of iron ore were discovered on the Kola Peninsula and, at about the same time large quantities of coal were discovered in the area of Pechora. These two factors made it possible to establish a viable steel industry in the northwest of Russia. In 1940 the Soviet government published a resolution "''On The Organisation of Steel Making in the North-West of the USSR''", which created a steel mill in Cherepovets, a city accessible by both the St Petersburg-Ekaterinburg railway and by the Volga-Baltic waterway. Facility construction accelerated after the end of the war, and at 3:25 PM on 24 August 1955, the Cherepovets steel mill was born. Development continued in the following decades, making Cherepovets a major centre of steel production in the Soviet Union. On 24 September 1993 a decree by Russian President Boris Yeltsin, transformed the state-owned Cherepovets Iron and Steel Complex into the Severstal open joint-stock company. A highly publicised attempt to merge Severstal with the French conglomerate Arcelor did not materialise and Arcelor instead merged with Mittal Steel on 25 June 2006 to create Arcelor Mittal. In 2005 the Russian steel and mining company Severstal became the majority shareholder (approx 60%) of Gruppo Lucchini, the remainder being owned by Lucchini Family (30%) and other minor shareholders. In 2010, Severstal acquired all the shares of Gruppo Lucchini from Lucchini family and became the only shareholder of the company. The Vorkutinskaya mine, in the Komi region of northern Russia belonging to Severstal, experienced an explosion at 10:28 a.m. local time (0628 GMT) on 11 February 2013 that caused the mine to collapse on a team of 22 people. Nine men are dead and 8 are still missing according to the interior ministry.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://bigstory.ap.org/article/russias-emergency-situations-ministry-says-9-men-are-dead-mine-blast-russias-north )〕 A total of 18 people lost their lives in the accident. In 2014 Severstal completed its exit from steelmaking in the United States, selling the former Rouge Steel plant in Dearborn, Michigan to AK Steel for $700 million, and its mini-mill in Columbus, Mississippi, built in 2007, to Steel Dynamics for $1.63 billion. Since 2010 Severstal had also sold several other American facilities.〔("Russia’s Severstal Sells U.S. Plants for $2.3 Billion" ), ''Bloomberg Business'', July 21, 2014.〕〔("Severstal Completes Sale of Steelmaking Assets" ), ''Metal Center News'', October 1, 2014 .〕
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