Kryvbas may also refer to the FC Kryvbas Kryvyi Rih

FC Kryvbas Kryvyi Rih

FC Kryvbas Kryvyi Rih is a Ukrainian professional football club from the city of Kryvyi Rih. The club currently plays in Ukrainian Premier League and is based in the Metalurh Stadium, which seats 29,734....

, the football team in Kryvyi Rih.

Kryvbas is an important economic region in central Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

, specializing in iron ore mining

Mining

Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...

 and the steel industry. It is arguably the main iron ore region of Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

. Named after the city of Kryvyi Rih

Kryvyi Rih

Kryvyi Rih or Krivoy Rog is a city in central Ukraine. It is situated in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, to the southwest of the oblast's administrative center, Dnipropetrovsk, at the confluence of the Inhulets and Saksahan rivers...

, the region occupies the southeastern part of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast

Dnipropetrovsk Oblast

Dnipropetrovsk Oblast is an oblast of central Ukraine, the most important industrial region of the country. Its administrative center is Dnipropetrovsk....

, as well as a small neighbouring part of the Kirovohrad Oblast

Kirovohrad Oblast

Kirovohrad Oblast is an oblast of Ukraine. The administrative center of the oblast is the city of Kirovohrad.-Geography:The area of the province is , its population is 1.1 million....

.

The region possesses major deposits of iron ore and some other metallurgical ores. To exploit them, several large mining companies were founded here in the middle of the 20th century. Most of them are located in Kryvyi Rih itself, which is the longest city in Europe.

Kryvorizhstal

Kryvorizhstal

Kryvorizhstal is Ukraine's largest integrated steel company located in the Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih.Bought in 2005 by Mittal Steel, the company is one of the most important businesses in Ukraine and a globally important steel producer. It is the largest steel manufacturer in Ukraine and...

 (located in Kryvyi Rih) is the largest and most up-to-date steel company in the region (as well as in the whole Ukraine), comprising not only ore facilities, but also a major steel mill

Steel mill

A steel mill or steelworks is an industrial plant for the manufacture of steel.Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon. It is produced in a two-stage process. First, iron ore is reduced or smelted with coke and limestone in a blast furnace, producing molten iron which is either cast into pig iron or...

 (the only one in the city). Other ore companies supply their raw materials to either Kryvorizhstal or steel mills outside the region (particularly to Dnipropetrovsk

Dnipropetrovsk

Dnipropetrovsk or Dnepropetrovsk formerly Yekaterinoslav is Ukraine's third largest city with one million inhabitants. It is located southeast of Ukraine's capital Kiev on the Dnieper River, in the south-central region of the country...

).

Steel companies of the region (except Mittal Steel-owned Kryvorizhstal) are controlled by either the Privat Group

Privat Group

The Privat Group, or PrivatBank Group is a international business group, based in Ukraine and grouped around the Privatbank. Privat Group controls dozens of companies of virtually every industry in Ukraine, Ghana, Russia, Romania, United States and other countries. Steel, oil&gas, chemical, energy...

 or the SCM

SCM Holdings

System Capital Management or SCM is a major Ukrainian financial and industrial holding company with headquarters based in Donetsk in the east of the country. The business is controlled by a Ukrainian businessman Rinat Akhmetov who owns 100% of the company shares...

. From the 1990s until 2004, these once united and state-owned industries went through a hard and scandal-ridden process of privatization

Privatization

Privatization is the incidence or process of transferring ownership of a business, enterprise, agency or public service from the public sector to the private sector or to private non-profit organizations...

.

There is also a major mining and processing factory under construction in the neighboring city of Dolynska

Dolynska

Dolynska is a city in Kirovohrad Oblast of Ukraine. Population is 18,768 ....

 (Kirovohrad Oblast). This advanced-technology project is co-funded by the governments of Ukraine, Romania

Romania

Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

 and Slovakia

Slovakia

The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...

.