April 3, 2015. Plant 9 (a member enterprise of Uralvagonzavod Corporation) started using a new wire electrical discharge machine. The launch of this new piece of equipment was part of the company’s retooling and fleet of machines renovation program, the corporation’s press service reports. ‘It took us six months to do all the assembly and start-up and commissioning jobs before the machine could be launched. Then, a trial part was processed. Special attention was paid to training the workers who will be using this WEDM machine: the training and maintenance instructions were provided by an

April 3, 2015. Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant/ChTPZ and Rosnano have set up a joint venture for making pipe fittings out of nano-structured materials. ChTPZ has a 50.1% shareholding in Eterno, while Rosnano’s stake in the business comes to 49.9%. The new production facility is expected to be launched at ChTPZ site in Chelyabinsk by the end of 2015; 300 new jobs will be created. By now, the production building has been completed and all the necessary equipment is being assembled at the moment. The new plant will manufacture stamp-welded fittings such as bends, tees, and hermetization and

April 3, 2015. The amount of European visas issued to Russians plummeted by 30% to 40% this year, Senior Consul at Consulate-General of Hungary in Yekaterinburg Pal Fabian announced in the course of a press breakfast at a tourist fair. According to Fabian, this was mainly caused by shrinking tourist traffic and therefore the demand for visas, which, in its turn, has to do with Russia’s economic hardships. ‘As for the year 2015, the situation is far from rosy. The demand for visas is on the decrease. Apart from visas to Hungary, we also issue those to Slovenia, Austria, Slovakia, Denmark, and

April 3, 2015. 400 cars were stolen in Sverdlovsk Region in the first three months of the year: this was five cars less than in the first quarter of 2014. 170 out of these 400 automobiles couldn’t be found and returned to their owners, Deputy Head of Sverdlovsk Region division of the Internal Affairs Ministry’s Criminal Investigation Department Natig Bairamov announced at a press conference. According to Bairamov, cars in the medium price range (600,000 RUR to 800,000 RUR) are stolen most often. The three most frequently stolen brands are Toyota Corolla, Mazda 3 and 6, and Ford Focus. Also,

April 3, 2015. The company’s 5,000,000th metric ton of steel produced with the help of an arc furnace was made at Seversky Pipe Plant/STZ (a member enterprise of Pipe Metallurgical Company). The arc furnace was first used on October 17, 2008. STZ managed to produce its 5th million of metric tons of steel in fourteen months, just like all the earlier millions, which means that the plant workers have mastered all the modern steel-making technologies successfully and are great professionals, the company reports. The arc-furnace steel-smelting operations were performed by a shift of workers