March 31, 2015. Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s head plant got a visit from representatives of Azerbaijan Railways, who came to meet with the corporation’s Director-General Oleg Sienko. According to the Russian holding’s press service, this visit contributed to the agreement on supplying various modifications of freight cars to Azerbaijan Railways which the two parties signed in March 2015. Uralvagonzavod has received specifications for the first 600 freight cars and 300 tanks since the moment the contract was signed. The first set of 12-132 gondola cars and 15-150-04 tanks has already been

March 31, 2015. A robot-aided stamping unit meant for making blanks of box-and-pin joints was launched at Orsk Machine-Building Plant (a member enterprise of Pipe Metallurgical Company/TMK) on March 27, TMK press service reports. The launching ceremony was attended by Governor of Orenburg Region Yuri Berg, TMK BOD Chairman Dmitri Pumpyanski, Mayor of Orsk Viktor Frantz, TMK Director-General Alexander Shiryayev, and the plant’s long-service employees and other workers. The unit is meant for making precise stamped blanks that will be used to manufacture box-and-pin joints with the help of

March 31, 2015. A Lufthansa airplane going from Beijing to Munich had to make an emergency landing at Yekaterinburg’s Koltsovo Airport because one of the passengers was not feeling well, the airport’s press service reports. ‘The plane on Beijing-Munich flight had to make an emergency landing at Koltsovo because one of the passengers suddenly felt extremely unwell,’ says Koltsovo Airport’s press officer Dmitri Tyukhtin. According to Tyukhtin, a decision was made to take the passenger to a local hospital after the plane had landed.

March 31, 2015. The average price of a square meter in a new apartment in Yekaterinburg might go down by 5% to 10% by the end of 2015, Ural Chamber of Real Estate’s Executive Director Rustem Galeyev announced at a press conference. ‘We expected a 60% drop in demand before the government support program was adopted; now we think the drop will probably reach 30%. This will bring the housing prices down a bit. The government program’s main weakness is its focus solely on the new homes market,’ Galeyev says. The expert believes this focus will disrupt the existing financial chains, as many

March 31, 2015. The Bank of Russia carried a rating of banks that are important players in the payment services sector; there are fifty-one businesses on the list, including SKB Bank, the bank’s press service reports. Under the Bank of Russia’s Decree 3439U (dated November 6, 2014), a bank is classed as an important payment services market player if its share of credit/debit card transactions, the number of credit cards issued, or the number of ATMs, POS terminals, and imprinters in one of Russia’s federal districts comes to more than 2% of the total number of those. Under the National

March 30, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region Prime Minister Denis Pasler paid a visit to Uraltransmash (a member enterprise of Uralvagonzavod Corporation). According to the corporation’s press service, the enterprise’s Director-General Alexei Nosov informed the official of the development of affairs at the plant, with a focus on the tram production and their work on the new-generation tram R1 in particular. Uraltransmash had its tram production facilities rebuilt over the last two years; besides, the newest equipment was purchased for the mass production of 71-409, a low-floor, three-section tram; this

March 30, 2015. Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s head plant is putting up a new lab to give students at Nizhniy Tagil Machine-Building School (a subsidiary of Ural Federal University) an opportunity to practice. This is part of the company’s social partnership program. The corporation’s press service explains the lab will house a milling and turning class and will be fitted with a software-controlled turning machine. The lab will contribute to the company’s united educational system program which aims to train a highly skilled worker that Uralvagonzavod and other Russian defense enterprises need.

March 30, 2015. Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant (ChTPZ) is going to supply 10,000,000 kg of large-diameter pipes for the construction of the Beineu – Bozoi – Shymkent gas pipeline in March and April. The pipeline is being built by the Republic of Kazakhstan and the People’s Republic of China, ChTPZ Group’s press service reports. Under the terms of the contract, ChTPZ Group will provide their customer, Beineu – Shymkent Gas Pipeline, with 1,067-mm pipes (wall width 11.9mm) with three-layer corrosion-resistant outer coating made of X70 MMK steel. All of the pipes for the order will be

March 30, 2015. Yekaterinburg housing market supply has been growing steadily over the last two months, even though the price fluctuations have remained insignificant, Ural Chamber of Real Estate’s press service reports. The number of apartments and rooms offered for sale through the Chamber’s database went up by 15% in February: there are currently more than 9,000 apartments and nearly 1,400 rooms in communal apartments that can be purchased in Yekaterinburg. Besides, it now takes up to five months to get a place sold. Housing prices, however, haven’t been changing in any noticeable way,

March 30, 2015. The third round of WorldSkills Sverdlovsk Region came to an end in Pervouralsk today. Contests were held at ChTPZ Group Training Center, which specializes in training its students in the five skills WorldSkills requires: mechatronics, mobile robotics, operation of numerically controlled milling and turning machines, and welding technologies. Winners were selected based on their performance in the three-day contest, ChTPZ Group’s press service reports. Students on the Group’s Future of White Metallurgy Program proved the strongest in the Mechatronics and Mobile Robotics

March 27, 2015. Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s head plant in Nizhniy Tagil launched DECT, a microcell network, at its metallurgical, railway carriage assembly, and mechanical assembly departments. ‘The new system makes control more efficient and helps make all the jobs safer. It is also meant to prevent accidents or reduce their impact on the production processes through clear administration and immediate notification of emergency services,’ the company says. It took several years to introduce DECT at the plant. The first fifty-subscriber station was launched at Uralvagonzavod’s power station

March 27, 2015. 75 management companies in Sverdlovsk Region housing services and utility sector owe more than 2.536bn RUR to heat and power suppliers (including 2.36bn RUR owed for heat energy and 167m RUR owed for electric power supplies). Yekaterinburg companies’ share is currently the largest, as they owe suppliers 1.2bn RUR, Sverdlovsk Region division of EnergoSbyT Plus’s press service reports. ‘The amount of money owed to resource suppliers exceeds our retooling and repair budgets by many times. Practices adopted by some unscrupulous management companies pose a formidable threat both to

March 27, 2015. Russia’s Sberbank went three positions down in the Forbes banks’ reliability rating for the year 2015. The bank is now placed 8th on the first-group-reliability list. Remarkably, Nordea Bank, Citibank, HSBC Bank, BNP Paribas, Crdit Agricole CIB, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and MSP Bank were all ahead of the country’s largest bank in this rating. Citibank, however, was also demoted from the first to the second place. Forbes analysts explain that the most reliable banks operating in Russia at the moment are daughter enterprises run by foreign banks. ‘This year, the

March 27, 2015. It has preliminarily been calculated that there were 1,362 enterprises responsible for atmospheric discharge with 57 stationary emission sources in Sverdlovsk Region last year. According to Sverdlovskstat, overall emissions amounted to 9,322,000,000 kg (compared with 10,073,000,000 kg in 2013). 8,300,000,000 kg (89%) of emissions were filtered and neutralized and 1,021,000,000 kg were discharged in the air; this was, in fact, 76,000,000 kg less than in 2013. At the same time, Nizhniy Tagil’s air emissions went up by 14% last year; the emission rates in the rest of Sverdlovsk

March 27, 2015. Increasingly more Russians are opting for a used car rather than a new one: their number went up from 29% to 40%, Interfax refers to Russian Public Opinion Research Centre’s survey findings as stating. About 14% of respondents would like to purchase a new Russian automobile, while 13% of those surveyed are considering buying a used Russian car. 78% of respondents are not planning on getting a car, while 20% are thinking about this. 1% of those who intend to buy a car hope to do so within the next six months, 4% will probably make the purchase within a year, and 12% will do so

March 26, 2015. Business training on risk management and internal control took off at Uralvagonazov Corporation’s head plant. The seminar aims to train managers in detection, evaluation, and management of risks and in making risk-oriented decisions, the corporation’s press service reports. ‘The training is given by Moscow-based experts in risk management, who will also help the company create a risk management and internal control system, identify critical risk factors, and prepare reports for the top management and the Board of Directors,’ the press service says. Based on these outside

March 26, 2015. Middle Ural Development Corp (run by Sverdlovsk Region Ministry for Public Property Management) incurred 1,514,716,000 RUR worth of net loss in 2014, whereas twelve months earlier, the company finished the year 2013 off with 4.159m RUR worth of net profit, the issuer’s annual accounting report states. According to this report, the company set up bad debt reserves (520,634,930 RUR all in all) last year to back up such projects as Low-Rise Construction Center, High Speed Railway Network 2, and Ural Exhibition Center. The corporation paid 28,292,256 RUR worth of bonuses to its

March 26, 2015. VSMPO Avisma’s net profit declined by 46%, from 7.451bn RUR to 4.018bn RUR, in 2014, the company reports. ‘The unfavorable differences in the rate of exchange caused by the weakening of the ruble in late 2014 were the main negative factor affecting this result. It was also for this reason that our EBITDA dropped by 33.4% and came to 8.302bn RUR last year,’ the corporation explains. Additionally, the number of employees within the company decreased by290 people and thus came to 20,200 workers, whereas per-worker output actually went up by 20.4% and amounted to 2.7m RUR. The

March 26, 2015. SKB Bank remains a proactive contributor to the government agricultural sector support program: this week, a loan was issued to Alapayevsk Dairy Plant. The money was directed to a number of agribusinesses as part of Sverdlovsk Region Government seed time 2015 campaign, the bank’s press service reports. In March, SKB-Bank already issued a loan to Irbit Dairy Plant, one of Sverdlovsk Region’s largest agricultural enterprises. The bank won the 151m-ruble loan tender under the terms which were listed on the government purchases website; the plant received the loan on March 16,

March 26, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region public prosecution authorities completed its indictment of a 53-year-old shareholder of Group Linkor involved in a criminal lawsuit. According to the authorities’ press service, the man is charged with large-scale fraud (Article 159 (part 4) of the Russian Federation Criminal Code), premeditated bankruptcy (Article 196 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code), and fraudulent evasion of loans payable (Article 177 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code). According to the inquiry team, Group Linkor shareholder falsely purchased the right to over 244,000