After the war, the engineers evacuated from the western regions returned to their native places, which led to a shortage of engineering and technical personnel at Ural enterprises. Also, the Urals experienced a lack of funding for the reconversion of factories, since the bulk of the funds were directed to the restoration of areas liberated from occupation. At most factories in the region, the equipment required repair and updating. The equipment coming to the Urals on account of reparations from Germany and other aggressor countries was outdated and worn out.
The restructuring of the Ural metallurgy for the production of peacetime assortment was completed in 1946. Replacement and reconstruction of technological lines was often accompanied by a decrease in the quality of products due to untrained personnel and organizational problems. Since 1948, there has been a steady increase in production volumes. The construction of the Orsko-Khalilovsky Metallurgical Plant was continued, the capacities of the Magnitogorsk, Novotagilsky, Chelyabinsk, Chusovsky, and Lysvensky plants increased. The development of jet aviation, the nuclear industry, rocket engineering, and cosmonautics in the post-war period created the need for high-alloy steels, non-ferrous metal products, and the requirements for the quality of metals also sharply increased.
The main directions of technical progress in ferrous metallurgy in the post-war period were:
* further increase in the volume of blast furnaces and open-hearth furnaces
* increasing the share of steel smelting in electric furnaces and converters
* mechanization and automation of production processes
* the use of oxygen-enriched blast
* the use of natural gas as fuel
* mastering continuous and semi-continuous rolling
* introduction of continuous casting of steel
In April 1959, the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works began heating open-hearth furnaces with associated gas. By the end of the 1960s, more than 80% of steel was smelted in furnaces using natural gas. Since 1956, at the Nizhny Tagil Metallurgical Plant, and later at all Ural plants, oxygen enrichment began to be used, which made it possible to increase the productivity of open-hearth furnaces by 15-25% and reduce specific fuel consumption by 15-20%. In the 1960s, more than 60% of open-hearth steel and 72% of electric steel were smelted using oxygen.
In the copper-smelting industry, the mechanization of cleaning tuyeres and loading furnaces, and automation of units were introduced. These measures made it possible to almost double the production of copper at the Krasnouralsk and Kirovgrad copper-smelting plants. Due to the introduction of the roasting of copper charge and zinc concentrates in a fluidized bed at the Chelyabinsk Zinc Plant, zinc production increased, and the integrated use of raw materials was improved. At the Ufaleisk Nickel Plant, sulfation roasting of nickel matte was introduced; at the Karabash Plant, a system for automation of the thermal regime of reverberatory furnaces was introduced, which made it possible to increase the production of nickel and copper. At the Ural aluminum smelter, a continuous bauxite leaching process was developed, and two-tier thickeners were installed, which increased the production of alumina.
The restoration and development of metallurgy in the Urals in the post-war period was stimulated by a significant increase in capital investments. In 1961-1970, out of 2,457 million rubles of capital investments in metallurgy, 2,074 million rubles (84.4%) were invested in five enterprises: Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works - 752 million rubles (30.6%), Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant - 610 million rubles (24.8%), Nizhniy Tagil Iron and Steel Works - 401 million rubles (16.3%), Orsko-Khalilovskiy Iron and Steel Works - 230 million rubles (9.4%), Verkh-Isetsky Iron and Steel Works - 81 million rubles (3.3%). From 1946 to 1965, 4 blast furnaces, 6 coke oven batteries, 14 open-hearth furnaces, 6 rolling shops were built and launched at the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works. From 1947 to 1959, 4 blast furnaces, 18 open-hearths, 6 rolling mills, a unique converter shop for processing vanadium pig iron, and the country's first continuous casting machine were built at the Nizhniy Tagil Metallurgical Plant from 1947 to 1959. During the same period, blast furnaces, open-hearths, and electric furnaces were built and reconstructed at the Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant, and a sinter plant, electric steel-making shops No. 1 and No. 2, sheet-rolling, crimping, and section-rolling shops were put into operation. In 1950, a by-product coke plant was launched at the Orsko-Khalilovsky Metallurgical Plant; in 1955-1963 - 3 blast furnaces; in 1958-1966 - 9 open-hearth furnaces, blooming and sheet rolling mills. In 1950, the Magnitogorsk, Nizhniy Tagil and Chelyabinsk Combines smelted a total of 71.6% of all Ural pig iron, 53.4% of steel, and 57.1% of rolled products. Although the level of technical equipment of the Ural metallurgical plants was lower than in other regions, the cost of iron and steel produced was 10-15% less than the average for the USSR Ministry of Ferrous Metallurgy.
To cover the shortage of iron ore, supplies of ore from the Sokolovsko-Sarbaisky Plant in Kazakhstan began in 1957, and from the 1960s from the mines of the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly and the Kola Peninsula. At Vysokogorsky Mining and Processing Plant, the Magnetitovaya, Operational, and Yuzhnaya mines were commissioned in 1949-1954 to mine deep horizons. In 1963, the Kachkanarsky Mining and Processing Plant was put into operation, extracting iron ore with a relatively low (15-16%) iron content, but containing valuable vanadium, which significantly increases the strength properties of steel. To provide copper ore raw materials in the late 1950s - early 1960s, the Gaysky and Uchalinsky mining and processing plants were built. The main supplier of the Ural aluminum raw materials in the post-war years was the North Ural bauxite mines. The Bogoslovsky and Uralsky aluminum plants in 1949-1953 carried out the reconstruction of production facilities and mastered new technological processes.
In the 1950s and 1960s, a massive reconstruction of the Verkhnesaldinsky Metallurgical Plant was carried out with the transition to the production of semi-finished products from titanium alloys. The area of the plant was increased by 5 times. The worlds largest press with a force of 75 thousand tons was installed for stamping slabs. Rolling, forging, and stamping shops were built. Since 1966, the production of small diameter pipes has been mastered at cold rolling mills. After reconstruction, the plant became the worlds largest producer of titanium and aluminum alloys.
In the 1970s, reconstruction and refit of the Ural ferrous metallurgy enterprises were carried out. At the Kachkanarsky Mining and Processing Plant, for the first time in the Urals, the production of iron ore pellets was started, at the Nizhny Tagil Metallurgical Plant — wide flange beams, at the Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant — stainless steel sheets, at the Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Plant - bent profiles, and at the Verkh-Isetsky Plant — cold-rolled transformer sheets. The Ural Plant of Precision Alloys was built. The deposits of the region provided only 50% of iron ore raw materials for metallurgical plants during this period. Steelmaking in the 1970s developed through the introduction of out-of-furnace steel processing, reconstruction of open-hearth furnaces into two-shaft furnaces, and increasing the capacity of converters. Demand from the engineering and oil industries contributed to the expansion of pipe rolling enterprises. In 1975, the Sinarsky Pipe Plant launched pipe rolling shop No. 2, which produced drill pipes. In December 1976, a pipe rolling shop was launched at the Seversky Pipe Plant. At the Pervouralsky Novotrubny Plant in 1976, for the first time in the country, the production of stainless steel pipes for the nuclear industry was mastered. About 65% of Ural steel pipes were produced by the Chelyabinsk Pipe Rolling Plant, the Sinarsky Pipe Plant was the largest producer of cast iron pipes in the country. In general, Ural plants produced more than 33% of all pipes produced in the USSR. In 1980, Ural metallurgical plants smelted 28.6 million tons of pig iron, which became an absolute historical record for the region.
In 1990, Ural metallurgy accounted for the production of 24.5% of all-Union cast iron, 26.1% of steel, 27.5% of rolled products, and 30.7% of steel pipes. In the last years of the existence of the USSR, in the Ural metallurgical industry, problems with an outdated equipment park and extensive development based on outdated technologies have become aggravated. The proportion of obsolete equipment in ferrous metallurgy was estimated at 57%, in non-ferrous - 70%. About 90% of the equipment of blast furnace shops and 85% of the equipment of rolling shops in the Urals by the early 1990s had a service life of more than 20–25 years. In 1985, the share of open-hearth steel in total production in the Urals was 78.2%, while in Western countries and in Japan in the 1980s, environmentally dirty open-hearth production was discontinued. The problem of environmental pollution has significantly worsened. The surroundings of the Karabash plant have become an ecological disaster zone. There were 0.2 million hectares (200,000 hectares = 494,210.76 acres) of land that were dumps and slurry pits.