Kuncice Metallurgical Combine

(full name, Klement Gottwald Kunčice Metallurgical Combine, also known as the New Metallurgical Combine), one of Czechoslovakia’s largest iron and steel enterprises, the first metallurgical enterprise constructed by the people’s democratic system after World War II. It is located near the city of Ostrava.

The combine went into operation in 1951 and has a battery of ten coke ovens—the largest complex in the country. Its four blast furnaces have a net volume of 1,170 cu m each. The steel-smelting plant was producing more than 3 million tons of steel a year in the early 1970’s. The principal output of the combine is conversion pig iron, billets, steel strip, rolled steel shapes, reinforcing steel, sheet steel, seamless pipe, and welded pipe. The combine operates on iron ore imported from the Soviet Union and coking coal from the Ostrava-Karviná bituminous coal field. About 23 percent of the country’s exports of ferrous metallurgical items in 1970 came from the combine.