November 15, 2012. On November 13, 2012 Second Freight Company (VGK), a daughter enterprise of Russian Railways that was set up in August 2010 following the Russian Railways’ management’s decision, was renamed into Federal Freight Company (FGK). Now the former VGK is one of Russia’s largest freight forwarding operators and currently has 135,000 gondola cars, 25,000 carriages, and about 11,000 platforms in its fleet of vehicles.

November 14, 2012. A contest called Man of Labor 2012 was held at Uralvagonzavod for the first time this year. The contest is open to young male workers with varying specializations. All of the contestants are employed with Uralvagonzavod Corporation head office and its member Uralcryomash. The competition aims to show that blue-collar workers possess not only professional expertise but also a broad outlook and great creative potential, Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s press service reports. The contest is designed in such a way as to have the participants demonstrate their knowledge of arts and

November 14, 2012. ChTPZ Group presented its stand to the participants of the metallurgical industrial exhibition Metal-Expo 2012. This year, the pipe manufacturers’ theme is the victory in the Great Patriotic War. Such a choice was made because the Group’s head company, Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant, is to celebrate its 70th anniversary this year, the company’s press service reports. ‘The life story of companies comprising ChTPZ Group is the life story of the great endeavor of its workers who did their best for the sake of their Motherland. The metallurgical industry workers are generally

November 14, 2012. A local resident appealed to Customer Support Center of Sverdlovsk Region Hygiene & Epidemiology Center’s Yekaterinburg subsidiary in order to get advice on the legitimacy of Rostelecom’s actions, the press service of Sverdlovsk Region division of Rospotrebnadzor reports. The man signed a landline use agreement with Rostelecom for local calls and with MTT for long-distance and international calls. For three months, he kept making long-distance and international calls and suddenly got a 2,000-ruble bill from Rostelecom in mid-January 2011. Then, in November 2011 and in

November 14, 2012. Russian Television and Radio Broadcasting Network (RTRS) Director-General Andrei Romanchenko and Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Evgeny Kuivashev met in Moscow on November 12 to finally agree on the mechanisms of transferring ownership rights over Yekaterinburg TV Tower to Sverdlovsk Region. This unfinished tower is located in Stepan Razin St, RTRS press service reports. The meeting was also attended by Sverdlovsk Region Minister for Public Property Management Alexei Pyankov, RTRS First Deputy DG for Corporate Governance Pavel Stepanov, and Director of RTRS regional office

November 14, 2012. The deputies of Sverdlovsk Region Legislative Assembly adopted a draft bill on introducing a patent taxation system in the region in the first reading. The project is being developed due to some changes in the Russian Federation Tax Code that mean that on November 1, 2013, a special new taxation regime called the patent taxation system will come into effect. The patent tax is expected to come to 1,000 RUR a month for renting an office and the transportation services tax is to come to 336 RUR (in Sverdlovsk Region) and to 605 RUR (in Yekaterinburg).

November 13, 2012. A turner from Uraltransmash (a member of Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation) A. Sabitov won the third prize in the professional skills competition (Glory to the Man of Labor) held in Ural Federal District. Sabitov won in the Turner category, Uralvagonzavod’s press service reports. This district-wide professional skills competition for turners took place in Magnitogorsk on November 8-9, 2012. There were 19 contestants altogether: six students from vocational schools and 13 professional turners. The contest comprised two stages: theory and practice. The

November 13, 2012. Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation’s museum now features a one-person exhibition where the works of a well-known Nizhniy Tagil-based artist and teacher as well as a master of landscape-painting Dmitri Kavalershin are presented. The exhibition opens in the year of the artist’s 110th birthday and is the first one organized after his death in 1952, the corporation’s press service reports. A member of Russia’s Union of Artists since 1939, Dmitri A. Kavershin had to relocate from Stalingrad to Nizhiy Tagil in 1941. He worked at Uralvagonzavod as a painter for

November 13, 2012. Uralcryomash (a member of Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation) mastered the production of chemical tanks 15-157-02 meant for transportation of sodium hydroxide, Uralvagonzavod’s press service reports. This kind of produce was handed over to Uralcryomash by the head office because the latter is very busy. In the past, Uralvagonzavod had made about 200 units of this make altogether. Chemical tanks were a new product type for the cryogenic plant, but, despite the product being new and despite tight deadlines, the production has already been launched. The

November 13, 2012. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) is now considering the possibility of making additional medium-term investments of $100m in the development of its Turkish asset MMK-Metalurji in order to cut down on the prime cost and enhance production efficiency, the company reports. MMK is considering, among other things, putting up an OxiCup-type shaft furnace and a briquette-manufacturing facility (which will reduce the company’s dependence on the scrap metal/rolls price ratio and will allow for effective use of industrial waste and replacement of purchased pig iron with the

November 13, 2012. 11 criminal lawsuits were instituted in Sverdlovsk Region that were related to unlawful use of funds in the communal housing services sector. According to the investigative team, the total damage done to the regional and federal budgets and some for-profit organizations amounted to more than 108m RUR, the press officer of Sverdlovsk Region division of Russia’s Investigative Committee’s Investigative Administration reports. For one, criminal action was taken by the Interregional Investigative Departments of Verkhnyaya Pyshma, Kamensk-Uralsky, Asbest, Talitsa, Kachkanar,

November 12, 2012. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) is now considering the possibility of making additional medium-term investments of $100m in the development of its Turkish asset MMK-Metalurji in order to cut down on the prime cost and enhance production efficiency, the company reports. MMK is considering, among other things, putting up an OxiCup-type shaft furnace and a briquette-manufacturing facility (which will reduce the company’s dependence on the scrap metal/rolls price ratio and will allow for effective use of industrial waste and replacement of purchased pig iron with the

November 12, 2012. The construction of the bridge across the River Nadym is proceeding faster than planned: at the moment, the builders are 20% ahead of schedule. This construction project is part of the infrastructure program called Northern Latitudinal Railway that is now being implemented by Development Corporation. The bridge will combine a railway and a highway, with the same supports for both. According to the Director-General of the contractor company Mostostroy-12 Vitaly Dmitriyev, this bridge will be the largest transport infrastructure facility in the Nadym area. The length of the

November 12, 2012. On Monday, November 12, public hearings dedicated to the estimates of Beloyarskaya Nuclear Power Plant’s power generating unit 4 and its BN-800 reactor’s environmental impact will be held in Zarechny; such an announcement was made by Sverdlovsk Region Press & Information Administration. The hearings are aimed at informing the public of the activity planned at the plant as well as of the ways in which it affects the environment, and of the decisions taken to reduce this impact as much as possible. This procedure is obligatory for companies that hold a state license

November 12, 2012. In the nine months of 2012, about 600m RUR worth of damage was done to Ural Federal District by illegal lumbermen, the district’s Forestry Department’s press officer reports. 1,320 cases of illegal lumbering (amounting to 68,391 m3) were registered in Ural Federal District over the same period. The damage was estimated at 593.3m RUR. In fact, the number of cases of illegal lumbering went down by 5% (or 66 instances) against the nine months of 2011, while the volume of illegal logging decreased by 27% (or 25,641 m3) and the damage done to the district declined by 25% (the

November 12, 2012. A worker from ChTPZ’s Vysota 239 department elaborated the concept of ChTPZ stand for the Metal-Expo Exhibition, the company’s press service reports. The 33-year-old Kirill Osadchiy was chosen as the author of the best stand. All in all, a few scores of company workers from various departments and services (including the electric steel-smelting facility Iron Ozone 32, the finishing center, and Vysota 239) took part in the Best Stand contest. ‘Our company is above all our people, who can handle any workload and cope with even the most challenging tasks. The program of the

November 12, 2012. Yandex sued a Yekaterinburg-based entrepreneur Evgeny Balabanov for 1m RUR. The company insists that the defendant be forbidden to use the Punto Switcher software product, as Yandex has exclusive ownership rights over the program. This news was posted on Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court website. Yandex requires that the use of this software by the defendant be declared illegal since the program can only be used free of charge for non-profit purposes. However, in the case of the website Scan.ru, which is administered by Balabanov, the use of the said software product

November 9, 2012. Uralvagonzavod, the head office of UVZ Corporation, came up with a staff performance report for October. All the plans for this month were fulfilled in full, UVZ Corporation’s press service reports. The company produced 11.5bn RUR worth of goods in October and 77.8bn RUR worth of goods since the beginning of the year. These figures are actually 16.1% higher than a year earlier. The sales revenues reached 5.5bn RUR in October and 72.8bn RUR in the ten months of 2012; the expected ROS for October is 19%. The company manufactured 2,381 vehicles last month and 23,308 vehicles

November 9, 2012. Experts from the Germany-based TUV NORD CERT completed their witness audit of Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) environmental management system aimed at checking the system’s compliance with the international ISO 14001:2004 standard. MMK PR Department reports the audit program was completed in full; no discrepancies were found in the course of the audit. TUV NORD CERT auditors offered some improvement recommendations at the end of the tests and announced that MMK environmental management system kept on developing and fully complied with the international ISO

November 9, 2012. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development completed the secondary public offering of its bonds at MICEX on November 7. The bonds were sold on the secondary market in full; Promsvyazbank, which was in charge of the first issue in April 2011, acted as the underwriter for this issue as well. All in all, seven deals were made in the course of trading, and 553,936 bonds worth a total of 555,509,178.24 RUR were sold: this was the entire volume offered on November 2. Remarkably, the secondary demand was twice as big as the supply and came to 1.134 million bonds. ‘The