UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 29, 2016. Ural Electrochemical Plant (a member enterprise of Rosatom’s TVEL, Novouralsk) proved No.1 Environmentally Responsible Enterprise in the local Green Owl Contest, the company press service reports. The winners were chosen by Novouralsk City Council, with the figurine of a green owl (which stands for unaffected environment) presented to the company’s Deputy Technical Director for Nuclear, Radiation, & Production Safety & Environmental Protection Evgeniy Skorynin by the city mayor Vladimir Mashkov in the course of a solemn ceremony. The Green Owl

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 29, 2016. Mikheyevsky Ore Mining & Processing Enterprise (a member enterprise of Russian Copper Company) reports on the first benchmark in their development of Mikheyevsky copper-porphyry ore deposit: the mine is now one hundred meters deep, Russian Copper Company’s press service reports. Mikheyevsky was set up in 2013 to become the largest ore mining and processing enterprise to be built from scratch in the post-Soviet zone. The company currently extracts copper ore from 107 meters under the ground. By the time the deposit has been fully exhausted, the mine

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 29, 2016. ChTPZ Group’s students and alumni of the corporate Future of White Metallurgy Education Program are going to represent their company at the 4th Sverdlovsk Region tour of WorldSkills Russia Championship, the company press service reports. The tour will be held in thirteen different locations in Sverdlovsk Region on February 29-March 4, 2016. The Group’s Training Center (and a certified WorldSkills center) in Pervouralsk is going to be one of these sites. The young professionals are going to demonstrate their skills in Mechatronics, Mobile Robotics,

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 29, 2016. Kirov-based LEPSE (a member enterprise of Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation) coordinated a trade union conference, the company press service reports. 582 out of 644 elected delegates were present at the conference to hear the trade union’s five-year report presented by Chair Tamara Maltseva. ‘Our three-year Collective Agreement is one of the most important projects where the company management and the trade union work together as partners. The crucial thing is that the management team does not consider the problems the trade union voices superfluous. We

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 29, 2016. Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation’s head plant in Nizhniy Tagil hosted a workshop on newly adopted labor legislation and professional standards of personnel management for the company’s HR managers, the company press service reports. The workshop at the plant’s Personnel Training Center was attended by personnel managers from Plant 9, Uralcryomash, Electromachine, Kamensk Uralsky Foundry Plant, Ural Transport Machine-Building Design Office, and other member enterprises. A civil and labor law expert from 21st Century Ural Cadre Training Institute was invited

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 26, 2016. Head of Yekaterinburg City Council Alexander Yakob took part in the joint annual meeting of Sverdlovsk Region Defense Industries Union and Russia’s Machine-Builders Union’s Sverdlovsk Region division, the city council’s press service reports. Heads of leading industrial enterprises, scientific research institutes, and design offices working for the defense industry, machine-building sector, and nuclear arms and energy sector were also invited to this meeting, as were representatives of research/production organizations, engineering and infrastructure

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 26, 2016. Russian Copper Company’s charity foundation supports local projects and helps children with serious health problems directly, the company press service reports. For one, the foundation keeps directing money to Nelly Ustinova’s Hearing Workshop, a clinic for hearing impaired children and adults. Three hearing aids (total cost 147,500 RUR) were purchased for the clinic’s very young patients in February. The company also supports Sverdlovsk Region Children’s TB Dispensary, which has 60 hospital beds for children in the 0-7 age group and just as many for

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 26, 2016. SKB-Bank’s consumer loan offer (dubbed For This & That) proved one of the top five most affordable loans in the country and was given the 4th position in the rating of cheapest cash loans Russian banks are offering at the moment, the bank’s press service refers to Sravni.ru as stating. The web portal’s analysts looked into the following: the loan amount (150,000 RUR) and the repayment period (1 year); secured loans were not among those considered. ‘It is only rarely that a loan offer remains popular with customers for a few years in a row, but For

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 26, 2016. MZS219, a pile-screwing unit made at Omsk Transport Machine-Building Plant (a member enterprise of Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation) will be used in Lensk, Yakutia, for bored pile testing, the company press service reports. The unit is meant as mechanized help in the construction of pile-supported anchor foundations of buildings and other structures that need to be put up in thawed, frozen, and unstable rocky soils. The testing will be done on the foundation of a house that will become a home for one of the pipeline walkers at Chayanda-Lensk section of the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 26, 2016. Russian Copper Company’s representatives took part in the All-Russian Industrial Environment Congress in Yekaterinburg, the company press service reports. The company’s Environment, Labor Protection & Industrial Safety Director Natalia Gonchar made a report on protective measures taken at Mikheyevsky Ore Mining & Processing Enterprise and on the green aspects of the emerging Tominsky Ore Mining & Processing Enterprise. ‘We invited quite a few experts from colleges and research labs when Tominsky was designed, so that we could get our

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 25, 2016. Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation opened one of its UVZSHOPs at the domestic flights terminal in Balandino Airport, Chelyabinsk, the company press service reports. ‘The opening of a new shop in Chelyabinsk is no ordinary event. This is the second time our shop has been introduced at an airport (the outlet at Koltsovo Airport in Yekaterinburg has been around for eighteen months now). We are moving to the Urals’ south, presenting our entire product range there. Prices are the same as in all other UVZSHOPs (there are five altogether – two in Nizhniy Tagil, two

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 25, 2016. More than twenty of Karabashmed workers underwent continuous professional development training this February, Russian Copper Company reports. ‘Just like all the other member enterprises of Russian Copper Company, Karabashmed pays special attention to its workers’ professional development and organizes CPD workshops on a regular basis. Three foremen from the plant’s Metallurgical Department underwent training and passed exams on Hazardous Waste Treatment (Hazard Class I-IV) on February 2-18,’ the company press service says. Also, nineteen workers from

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 25, 2016. Sverdlovsk Region Military Neuropsychiatric Hospital (whose patients are all war veterans) switched to MegaFon as their telecommunications services provider, the company press service reports. The hospital’s team were all able to keep their old phone numbers as part of the MNP service. ‘MegaFon keeps building a more expansive network in the remotest residential areas of Yekaterinburg to ensure mobile connection and Internet access to its customers. Shirokaya Rechka, where the hospital is located, base stations were tuned to work in 2G, 3G, and 4G

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 25, 2016. Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation’s head plant’s People’s Guard did forty-four tours of on-call duty (2,380 man-hours) in Nizhniy Tagil’s Dzerzhinsky District last year, the company press service reports. The guard members (all of them workers of the company head plant) helped local police detect 356 administrative offenses. Twelve of them received thank-you letters, which were added to their work record, and 113 people were offered one to three extra days of paid leave. ‘The People’s Guard and the police officers patrol the city streets, squares, and park

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 25, 2016. Russian Copper Company’s representatives took part in a meeting with Austrade’s Senior Trade Commissioner Duncan Cole and Honorary Consul Vladimir Gorokhov on February 18-19, the company press service reports. The two officials met with their Ural counterparts and members of the local business community to talk about the potential partnerships in the mining sector, infrastructure development projects, agriculture, and education. Advisor to Company President Igor Aksenov said on his company’s behalf that Russian Copper Company and Australian Trade

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk Region, February 25, 2016. MMK Group’s performance efficiency enhancing programs saved the company $135m in production costs last year, which means the prime cost of the company produce declined by nearly 3%, the company reports. Last year, the Group’s member enterprises made a special focus on energy efficiency improvement projects, encouraged innovation, inventions, and improvement proposals. The savings from energy spending cutting programs and low-budget yet highly efficient investment projects amounted to $30m in 2015. Also, improvements in the

UrBC, Moscow, February 24, 2016. Russia’s State Duma adopted a bill on Friday that makes creation of pyramid schemes illegal, with up to 1m RUR in fines (5,000 to 50,000 RUR for private individuals, 20,000 RUR to 100,000 RUR for public individuals, and 500,000 RUR to 1m RUR for legal entities), Finmarket reports. The same fines will be imposed on those advertising and promoting pyramid schemes. The amendments to this effect will be made to the Administrative Offense Code. The Duma also adopted amendments to the Criminal Code, making organization of financial pyramids a crime. Under this new

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 24, 2016. Gold is expected to fluctuate within the $1,240-1,263/$1,200-$1,220 per troy ounce range in the nearest future, the Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development’s press service refers t o the bank’s Precious Metals Operations Director Evgeniy Afanasiev as saying. ‘Gold prices have gone up by 17.5% since the start of the year, reaching a peak of $1,246.4 per troy ounce on February 11. The demand was reinforced by investors’ mistrust of the central banks’ policies and panic on the global financial markets. The European Central Bank and Bank of Japan,

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 24, 2016. 34% of transactions carried out by the Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development’s clients in January were made online, the bank’s press service reports. In 2015, customers used the e-banking services most in December, when the share of online transactions was 31%. As for January 2016, 65% of all client transactions were remote ones (e-banking, ATMs, and POS terminals). The bank representatives explain the share of remote payments started growing at the end of last year, when customers used their cards to pay for holiday shopping. The number of

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 24, 2016. Yekaterinburg-based Plant 9 (a member enterprise of Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation) elected its Youth Council members, the company press service reports. ‘The goal is to make sure our younger workers feel part of the team,’ says Deputy Director-General for HR Nikolai Ovchinnikov. ‘We always welcome their initiative and creative attempts and would really like the council to be a full-fledged, living organization rather than just a formal one.’ Vassiliy Kablukov will now be in charge of R &D. He said in his presentation that the innovative and