SteelUniversity Challenge 2006

In the last few days the second edition of the annual competition took place which is organized by the International Iron and Steel Institute (IISI) and MATTER, The University of Liverpool, called SteelUniversity Challenge 2006. The participants were young teams from 22 countries and five continents. The aim of the competition, which has met with great interest among university students and recent graduates, was to simulate the production of steel in an electric arc furnace and its subsequent processing into secondary metallurgical products, incurring the lowest possible costs.
There was a team of U. S. Steel Kosice employees among the competitors (Radoslav Lacko, Matej Sobota, Róbert Malinak and Marcel Nemec), and the second team representing Kosice in this competition consisted of fifth-year students at the Faculty of Metallurgy of the Technical University in Kosice, including Jana Lelakova and Martin Zubal, who took part in this year's summer internship program at USSK. Both teams achieved results which contributed to Slovakia's very respectable ranking in this international competition. Teams from Slovakia finished in eighth place, with teams from the USA just one place ahead of them.

A million tons for Ferona

Last Thursday, November 16th, our steelworks was visited by top representatives of Ferona, a.s. Prague, the trading company which is one of U. S. Steel Kosice's biggest customers. In connection with this visit, Ocel Vychodu was told by GM Central Europe Miroslav Maďar that USSK is extremely happy with its commercial cooperation with Ferona. He expressed the conviction that their mutual business relations will become deeper, especially due to the production from the prepared third galvanizing line at USSK and the expansion of Ferona's activities to include the automotive industry.

President's meeting with Maintenance staff

On Wednesday of last week, November 15th, the penultimate in this year's series of working lunches took place at which President David H. Lohr has been meeting selected employees who have achieved extraordinary working results in their professional fields. This time the invitation for a bit of chat over an informal lunch was accepted by 13 employees from the Repairs and Servicing Divisions. They were also joined by Vice-president Operations Richard Veitch, Vice-president Human Resources Miroslav Kiralvarga and GM Production Support Jan Vranec.

Festival of Independent Theaters

This year's Festival of Independent Theaters in Kosice (Nov. 25th - Dec. 3rd 2006) will once again be rich not only in terms of its program but also the number of participants. Coming to our city are 20 theater companies, including eight foreign ones, and they will be putting on 26 performances on eleven stages in six towns and cities around this region - apart from Kosice also in Spisska Nova Ves, Levoca, Roznava, Presov and Michalovce. The Festival of Independent Theaters is also sponsored by U. S. Steel Kosice.

A treat to end with

Last week saw the final two matches bringing the U. S. Steel Kosice Basketball Championships 2006 to an end. As expected, this year's champions are the players of the combined Strip Mills team, who encountered no stronger team in any game throughout the tournament, and thus deservedly defended their title from last year. Silver medals were won by the basketball players of the Management II team, who lost only once to the reigning champions themselves, and bronze went to the players of the team GM Environment.