UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 27, 2019. EVRAZ Holding’s member enterprises EVRAZ Nizhniy Tagil Integrated Metallurgical Plant (EVRAZ NTMK) and EVRAZ Kachkanarsky Ore Mining & Processing Plant (EVRAZ KGOK) proved Sverdlovsk Region’s best benefactors in the year 2019. According to EVRAZ Holding Ural’s Corporate Communications Center, EVRAZ NTMK was No.1 benefactor among the country’s ferrous metallurgical enterprises and EVRAZ KGOK was No.1 benefactor among the companies in the ore mining sector. EVRAZ Holding’s data indicate that the company’s Ural division directed more than RUB 2bn to

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 27, 2019. ChelPipe Group joined the Russian Union of Industrialists & Entrepreneurs; the executive order to this effect was signed by the Union’s President Alexander Shokhin, the Group’s press service says. ‘The Russian Union of Industrialists & Entrepreneurs is the country’s largest platform consolidating the industrialists and entrepreneurs’ efforts to develop the Russian economy. For ChelPipe Group, becoming a member of the Union is an opportunity to share its experience with the professional community and get the support needed for the company’s

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 27, 2019. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development (UBRD) extended the upper limit on the amount of money you can get through a consumer loan: every potential borrower can now apply for as much as RUB 5m, the bank’s press service reports. According to the UBRD bankers, the average number of loan applications per month rose by over 60% in the second half of 2019 compared with the first half of the year. Now before the recent increase, the UBRD’s upper limit on the consumer loan amount came to RUB 3m. ‘The decision to increase our upper loan limit is a

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, December 27, 2019. Metallurg Charity Foundation, for which Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) acts as the primary benefactor, coordinated the usual end-of-year meeting with heads of children’s specialized facilities located in Magnitogorsk and nearby rural areas on the site, MMK’s Information & PR Department reports. The meeting was also attended by Metallurg Charity Foundation’s Member of the Board of Trustees and Russian State Duma deputy Vitaly Bakhmetyev, Metallurg Charity Foundation’s Member of the Board and Head of Magnitogorsk Social Welfare Department

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 27, 2019. OOO FORES’s Asbest branch coordinated a job skills contest for the company’s front loader drivers, the company’s press service reports. ‘The first prize went to Viktor Gurnik, a front loader driver with thirty years’ work experience. Andrei Yanchenko came second and Mikhail Beloussov came third. Six drivers, all of them employed at the Transport Department and holding Job Class 6, competed in the contest all in all. Both the winners and the other contestants received honorary certificates and money premiums,’ the company says. The job skills contest for

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 26, 2019. ChelPipe Group supplied more than 150,000,000 kg of pipelines for the construction of the Turkmenistan–Afghanistan–Pakistan–India Pipeline (TAPI) by order of the state-owned concern TurkmenGaz. According to ChelPipe Group’s press service, the pipes with corrosion-resistant outer coating (diameter: 1,422 mm; steel grade: X70) are meant for the construction of the line section of the pipeline in Turkmenistan. ChelPipe Group was the only Russian company out of ninety-four applicants to have passed every stage of the qualifications-based selection procedure

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 26, 2019. Ural Airlines added the third Airbus A320neo (side number: VP-BRY) to its fleet of aircraft on December 24. This is the fourth plane from the NEO (New Engine Option) family the airline now operates. According to the airline’s press service, the plane arrived directly from an Airbus plant in Hamburg. ‘There are eight Business and 168 Economy seats on board. Neo aircraft are suited for long hauls and use 20% less fuel than their earlier versions. The new liner runs on the engines LEAP-1A made by CFM International, just like the other neo aircraft that the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 26, 2019. NEYVA Bank carried a preliminary performance report for the year 2019. The bank’s press service informed UrBC that the bank’s assets were maintained at around RUB 8bn throughout the year, which helped promote the bank from No. 206 to No. 201 in the national bank rating. ‘The year 2019 proved a special one for the business, since NEYVA Bank celebrated a ten-year anniversary of the founding date this year. This was on the whole a successful year; we kept up with our general development strategy that focuses on sustainable and gradual improvement of all

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 26, 2019. Fifteen employees from OOO FORES’s Asbest, Sukhoi Log, and Kuryi branches and workers from the company’s HQ are going to receive certificates confirming their license to carry out internal audits of the plants’ quality management systems in early 2020. ‘OOO FORES’s quality management system still meets the international ISO 9001: 2015 requirements. Internal audits are the obligatory condition and an indispensable part of the system’s running. They are the only way to determine whether the system needs to get improved and what commendable practices need

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 26, 2019. Sverdlovsk Region division of the State Expert Review Panel (aka Gosekspertiza) approved of the project on the construction of the second road junction extension in Serafima Deryabina St/Yekaterinburg Orbital Ring-Road; the department gave its full approval of the project. The next step is to actually build the second extension to the junction that will streamline the traffic waves intersecting at the ring road. The goal is provide an overhead road for the transit vehicles on Yekaterinburg Orbital Ring-Road. Under the terms of the project adopted by

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 25, 2019. OOO FORES’s Asbest branch coordinated a job skills contest for its electrical/gas welders this month; eight employees took part in the competition, FORES’s press service reports. ‘The pre-New-Year job skills contest on December 19 was the first round of the Best in Profession Contest FORES holds this year. Asbest Polytechnic acted as the plant’s partner in the organization of the event,’ the press service says. ‘The goal is to show that job skills are still quite necessary and valuable. These contests help bring back the respect for blue-collar jobs

UrBC, Moscow, December 25, 2019. A driverless KamAZ truck controlled through a 5G communication network was presented at an industrial site in Russia for the first time this month: the vehicle covered a 1,000-meter distance from the loading point to the unloading point at Listvyazhnaya Mine in Kuzbass; the truck was controlled through MegaFon’s 5G base station, the telecom company’s press service reports. Following the experiment, a video conference call to Moscow took place via Russia’s first 5G network to the east of the Urals that is now at work at Listvyazhnaya Mine. The call connecting

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, December 25, 2019. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) was featured in WWF Russia’s and National Rating Agency’s rating of the country’s top ten environmentally responsible companies for 2019, MMK’s Information & PR Department reports. ‘WWF Russia has been carrying its environmental ratings on a yearly basis since 2017 in order to help reduce environmental impact and promote responsible business practices in Russia. The rating is based on the assessment of the following three criteria: environmental management, environmental impact, and a company’s openness to

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 25, 2019. You can now book tickets for Ural Airlines’ Moscow-Larnaca-Moscow flights at a discount, the air carrier’s press service reports. ‘You can use our special offer now: prices for Moscow-Larnaca-Moscow and Larnaca-Moscow-Larnaca flights start from RUB 8,000/€115 (there and back, all fees included, prices subject to change depending on the exchange rate),’ the press service says. The price offer only applies to round trip bookings. The sale opens on December 24, 2019 on a first come, first served basis. The flights will get operated on January 8-March 28,

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 25, 2019. ChelPipe Group supplied more than 9,000,000 kg of large-diameter pipes (LDPs), 121 pipe bends, and 20 pipeline stamp-welded pipeline parts for the construction of Baltic Connector Pipeline in Estonia, the Group’s press service reports. ‘By order of the customer - a consortium comprising the Estonian companies EG Ehitus and Scanweld, the Group’s member enterprises Chelyabinsk Pipe Rolling Plant, ETERNO, and Pipeline Connecting Bends (SOT) produced a series of LDPs (diameter: 711 mm; steel grade: L415ME, with a three-layer outer coating), hot-bent bends

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 24, 2019. NEYVA Bank came up with the next year’s cashback calendar based on the customers’ most popular spending categories. According to the bank’s press service, there’s an increased cashback bonus on a certain product/service category for every month of 2020. ‘We kept analyzing the most popular product/service categories our customers spent on using the bank’s cards throughout 2019, and produced the most advantageous cashback calendar for 2020 there is: January is the entertainment month, so there’s an increased cashback bonus on money spent at water parks,

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 24, 2019. The per capita loan debt to annual pay ratio came to 61.3% in Sverdlovsk Region in 2019; one Sverdlovsk Region resident owes banks RUB 255,200 on average at the moment, RIA Novosti says. Given these figures, Sverdlovsk Region came No. 66 in the rating of Russian federal constituencies in terms of household debt, following Chelyabinsk Region (51.7%, No. 29) and Omsk Region (54.6%, No. 41). The per capita debt figures changed by 36.8% in the course of one year. Now the country’s average household debt rose from 44.9% to 47.1% in 2019. Russians living in

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 24, 2019. OOO FORES acted as one of the sponsors for the World Dance Council (WDC) World Championship in ten dance categories for professional dancers. The competition took place at Yekaterinburg EXPO’s new concert hall in Yekaterinburg for the first time on December 21, 2019, the company’s press service says. Additionally, the first tournament of the Euro Asian Dance Council (EADC) was held at the same time. Around a hundred pairs of contestants from nearly twenty different countries situated on three continents competed in the event. The preliminary rounds took

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, December 24, 2019. G.I. Nosov Magnitogorsk State Technical University (MSTU), which is the primary source of engineering workers for Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK), and the National University of Science and Technology MISiS are going to design a metallurgical training program together, MMK’s Information & PR Department reports. ‘In 2019, Russia’s Higher Education & Science Ministry suggested coordinating a contest involving Russian colleges outside of Moscow and Saint Petersburg to design advanced higher education programs together with the Russian

UrBC, Moscow, December 24, 2019. MegaFon and the world’s largest travel platform Booking.com signed an agreement to introduce free roaming services in 130 different countries for their customers. Users with a green SIM card can make calls, send texts, and use the Internet connection free of charge when traveling, the telecom company’s press service reports. MegaFon’s customers can access the service through a special landing page at booking.com. To use the service, all you have to do is book and pay for your hotel stay providing the phone number that you will be using during your trip. ‘Every