Ural Airlines are getting ready to sign its first online interline agreement with Hahn Air Lines GmbH, the German carrier; this is part of the general project aimed at introducing e-ticketing practices in Yekaterinburg. The two parties are currently looking at all overlapping areas of their services; the next stage of negotiations will concern full automation of all their procedures. An interline agreement is particularly difficult to handle online due to legal technicalities that demand that all the areas of cooperation must be indicated in the agreement in detail, which is necessary to make

Evrazruda JSC (Russian ore maker and part of Evraz Group) summed up the results of a competition held in the third quarter of 2006 among the company’s departments and employees. Abakanskiy subsidiary, with its 100% completion of the plan and 104.9% completion of targeted labour productivity figures, was considered the best. Gurievskiy subsidiary became first among mines and plants (its employees fully complied with the plan and over-performed in terms of labour productivity (3.1% better than the target figures). The working teams of the two subsidiaries as well as those who won personal

The opening bid for 9,627 ordinary registered paperless shares of the company (property of Russian Federation) is 20,050,000 RUR. They are sold by Sverdlovsk Region subsidiary of Russian Federal Property Fund. The applicants are eligible to apply from October 19 to November 20, 2006. The auction will be held on November 24, 2006.

Metallurgical Industrial Complex of Nizhniy Tagil (part of Evraz Group) is trying to improve its energy supply monitoring using an updated software version. This program was devised by the experts from the electric lab and those from the company’s IT center. The main idea behind this software is to provide full monitoring of energy consumption not only in terms of the company as a whole but also in terms of certain shops and areas in real time mode. A computer-aided control board allows for a prompt response in each case of over-spending in every shop and department. Thanks to the experts,

Vysokogorskiy Ore Mining and Processing Enterprise (part of Evraz Group) launches a long-term planning campaign among its managers. The plans must be targeted at cutting the company’s production costs. One project, proffered by the Head of Heat-and-Power Engineering Shop, involves changing the way the boilers operate, and this project has already proved to save quite a bit of money in terms of electricity bills. The managerial long-term planning practice was introduced in 2006 at the initiative of the Personnel Director. These plans are designed in order to stimulate initiative, production

Equipment located in the crushing shop of ore mining and processing enterprise of Kachkanar (Vanadium JSC, part of Evraz Group) undergoes scheduled repair. The company’s repair technicians have completed repairs and examination of four conveyor tracts and of receiving bunkers located in the small- and medium-scale crushing shops. This will be followed by the repair of the other sections of the shops. According to the plan, the crushing shop will have 16 kinds of its equipment repaired in October, without any interruption in the production process, reports the spokesperson for Evraz Group.

Metallurgical Works of Zlatoust summed up its success in September 2006. The company produced 49,696 tons of steel and 36,533 tons of rolled metal. The works shipped 36,092 tons of metal goods, the company’s spokesperson said to UrBC representative.

Magnesite Industrial Complex (part of Magnesite Group) is going to launch production of caustic magnesite in November 2006. This will make the company Russia’s first producer of the product, which has so far been only produced abroad (in China, Greece, and Spain). Magnesite Group has invested 245 million RUR in R&D, equipment restoration and upgrading and technological design. The annual output of caustic magnesite is expected at 90,000 tons. ‘Nowadays, these are mainly the large European enterprises involved in chemical, building, and agricultural industries that actually buy calcined