It was established in 1930 as Kerch Mining and Smelting Tekhnikum () to support the Kamysh-Burun Iron Ore Plant and the Voykov Metals Factory. Having trained about a thousand graduates by the time of the German invasion in 1941, the tekhnikum was eventually evacuated to the Urals to later return to Kerch in 1945. Thereafter, it produced various specialists to work in metallurgical regions of Ukraine and at the Ministry of Ferrous Metallurgy of the USSR, remaining the sole special secondary educational institution in the city until 1952.