Nikolai Maximov founded steel mini-mill developer Maxi Group and sold his controlling stake to billionaire Vladimir Lisin's NLMK in 2007.

FORBES: Nikolai Maximov & family

Yet it may still not be good enough: the best mini-mill firms can make a ton of steel using less than one man-hour of labour.

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An even lower-cost group of domestic producers are the mini-mill operators, such as Nucor, which make steel from scrap metal instead of iron ore.

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