Date, venue: 8 - 11 November 2016, Moscow Event info: Experts in the field of coke-sinter-BF production regularly conduct congresses, where managers, metallurgists, scientists of associations, companies, R&D and design institutes, centers and universities meet. The congress of blast furnace specialists, held in 2010 at NUST MISIS, reintroduced the old traditions of meetings for specialists of an ancient profession - upstream metallurgists. A steering committee was set up to hold the VIII International Congress "Ferrous Metallurgy - Challenges of the XXI Century". Main members of the steering committee: METPROM, NUST MISIS, Chermet Corporation, NP Russian Steel, JSC Chermetinformatsiya. METPROM was a primary sponsor of the Congress. The steering committee took on a major task of setting up and conducting the congress. The business and informal meetings were attended by 230 managers and experts from 15 steel companies of Russia and Ukraine, as well as from Germany, Luxembourg, China, Japan, Canada, Great Britain, from R&D institutes, design offices and centers, universities of Russia, Kazakhstan. The VIII International Congress of Blast Furnace Specialists included extensive discussions on sintering processes and the blast furnace theory, state-of-the-art equipment and new types of refractory materials for the pulverized coal injection technology. After the matters related to the upstream production stages were discussed at 8 sessions, the experts visited the International Exhibition Metal-Expo at VDNKh.