UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 20, 2016. Sinara Transport Machines (part of Sinara Group), Union de Ferrocarriles de Cuba, and the insurance company EXIAR signed a trilateral agreement to supply locomotives, buses, and railway equipment to Cuba, Sinara Group’s press service reports. The agreement was signed by the Union’s head Miguel Antonio Acuña Fernández, EXIAR Director-General Alexei Tyupanov, and STM Director-General Evgeniy Gritsenko. The ceremony was also attended by the Vice President of the Council of Ministers Ricardo Cabrisas Ruiz of Cuba, Russia’s Industry & Trade Minister Denis

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 20, 2016. 40% of all the transactions performed by the Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development’s customers in the two weeks of June were carried out online, the bank’s press service reports. This is an all-time peak, with the previous record set in May 2016, when the share of online payments came to 35%. 80% of all the online transactions are phone and Internet bill payments. ‘Our customers increasingly tend to transfer their money to service providers without actually visiting our branches. The overall share of remote payments (ATMs, POS terminals, e-banking)

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 20, 2016. 3,300 employees and their children will go on a company-paid vacation this summer, with ChTPZ Group directing 42.3m RUR to fund this campaign. According to the company press service, Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant and Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant’s current and former employees will travel to the company health resorts, while their children and grandchildren will stay at the company’s two summer camps. As it happens, the edutainment programs offered by these summer camps (Yelanchik and Gagarinsky) in 2015 won in the children’s summer edutainment program

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 20, 2016. Yurmash (a member enterprise of Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation) recently signed a contract with Micran to produce mast elevators mounted on the KamAZ 63501 chassis by order of Russia’s Defense Ministry, the corporation’s press service reports. The plant will soon start working on a set of mast elevators for MIK-MKS mobile communication systems; the pilot sample was made as early as 2009, while serial-scale production began in 2012. Hundreds of units have been supplied to the Russian Armed Forces since then. ‘This unique equipment is produced in cooperation

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 20, 2016. Omsk Transport Machine-Building Works (a member enterprise of Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation) recently took part in the 23d International Russian Coal & Mining Exhibition in Novokuznetsk, the corporation’s press service reports. This is the first time the plant has presented its underground mining equipment at a major international event. ‘Visitors to the fair were quite interested in the spare parts for quarry machinery and coal-pulverizing equipment. We’ve held talks with more than ten large businesses based in Moscow, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk,

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 17, 2016. According to Sverdlovskstat, local hotels made 8.9% less money in 2015 compared with the year 2014. The hotels’ revenue was estimated at 4.3bn RUR, or 2,049.7 RUR per night, last year on average. The average duration of stay was 2.5 days. All in all, there were 304 hotels, 35 furnished apartments (11.5% of all accommodation types), 18 halls of residence (5.9%), 4 resorts (1.3%), 3 motels (1%), and 4 other businesses (1.3%) operating in Sverdlovsk Region last year. The number of hotel rooms went up by 1,169 in 2015 compared with one year earlier and came to

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 17, 2016. Karabashmed (a member enterprise of Russian Copper Company) stopped using its Ausmelt furnace on June 1 in order to give it a scheduled overhaul, the company press service reports. The goal is to have the furnace gas condenser completely retooled and upgraded, which will require over 650,000 kg of new metal frames. Ausmelt furnace was launched in 2006, replacing the obsolete and outdated shaft furnaces. This was a major stage in the company’s overall retooling process, with Russian Copper Company spending some 16bn RUR on upgrades, renovations, and

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 17, 2016. Pipe Metallurgical Company (TMK) held a Board of Directors meeting on June 14, 2016, the company press service reports. The BOD members voted to re-elect Dmitri Pumpyanski as their Chair and Alexander Shiryaev as the company Director-General. A new Supervisory Board was also elected: Chair of the Board A. Shiryayev, A.Klachkov, A. Lyalkov, V. Oborsky, T. Petrosyan, V. Shmatovich, and A. Zimin.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 17, 2016. Kamensk-Uralsky Foundry Plant/KULZ (a member enterprise of Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation) bought a new ambulance car on the eve of Medical Worker’s Day, the company press service reports. ‘Our doctors need this car to arrive at production departments in cases of emergency and take a heavily injured patient to hospital, first-aid station, or clinic. The importance of an ambulance at a production site just cannot be overestimated. We also purchased some other new bits of equipment, for example, a new breathalyzer that prints the test results onto paper. This

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 17, 2016. LEPSE (a member enterprise of Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation) held its annual general meeting recently, with Deputy Director-General for Finance Irina Peskisheva presenting her report on the company performance, the corporation’s press service reports. ‘The company’s assets gained 11% in value because we started using our capital stock and increased our reserves. Production output went up by 9% (including an 11% increase in aviation goods output). Also, we have no unpaid loans at the moment,’ she said. According to Peskisheva, LEPSE has not been using any

UrBC, Saint Petersburg, June 17, 2016. The Arktika, Project 22220 nuclear-powered icebreaker, was floated at Baltic Plant in Saint Petersburg the other day. The body of the world’s largest and most powerful icebreaking vessel is made from metal supplied by Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works. In fact, MMK’s share of the Russian shipbuilding supplies market currently comes to over 50%. The company delivered 86,000,000 kg of metal goods to Russian shipbuilders last year, which was 11% more than in 2014 and 1.5 times more than in 2013. Apart from the Arktika and the Siberia, Project 22220 first

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 16, 2016. Omsk Transport Machine-Building Plant (a member enterprise of Ural Vagon Zavod) had its management system re-certified recently, the company press service reports. The audit procedure was carried out by Moscow-based MONOLIT-Cert; the plant proved to comply with all the performance standards, was evaluated very favorably, and was re-issued a number of certificates allowing the company to keep repairing, maintaining, installing, and assembling arms and military vehicles as well as selling civilian goods. The plant’s SovAsK job safety and healthcare management

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 16, 2016. Workers from Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation’s head plant in Nizhniy Tagil planted 129,700 flowers in the city’s Dzerzhinsky District, the company press service reports. ‘There are several flower beds in the area that are assigned to specific departments at the head plant. Flowers were planted in Tankostroiteley Square, next to I.V. Okunev Palace of Culture, along Leningradsky Avenue and Vagonostroiteley Avenue, and next to our war memorial. This year, we’ve chosen the plant’s 80th anniversary as our theme, with the flower beds and patterns designed by our

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 15, 2016. Nizhniy Tagil Integrated Metallurgical Works/NTMK (a member enterprise of EVRAZ Holding) was recently issued a certificate that allows the plant to supply five different types of railcar wheels to the Czech railways České dráhy, ČD, EVRAZ Holding Ural’s press center reports. The certificate was issued for solid-roll, curved-guide wheels VA-409, 428, 314, 004, and 005. The VA-004, VA-005, and VA-314 wheels also got certified under the TSI standard, which means these can be supplied to all the countries in the given region. Two more wheel types will be issued

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 16, 2016. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development (UBRD) opened an online shop on the social network VKontakte, the bank’s press service reports. Customers can now submit their bank card or deposit applications to the bank’s official group on VKontakte. The bank’s Internet Communications Director Mikhail Zenkov says today’s customers often look for good quality service and technological advances as well as for appealing terms and conditions, so it’s important to provide banking services where customers need them, social networks included. ’No business goals

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 16, 2016. Ural Airlines’ passenger traffic rose by 17% between January and May 2016 compared with a year earlier, the air carrier’s press service reports. 1.974 passengers have flown with the airlines since the start of the year so far, with passenger turnover up by 11%. 15% more flights were operated in the five months of 2016 against January-May 2015, including 10,164 domestic flights, 3,582 flights to and from the CIS member states, and 2,518 international ones (16,264 flights all in all). The air carrier offered its services to 506,777 passengers in May 2016

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 15, 2016. ChTPZ Group reports the company’s team has won 15 medals at the recent preliminary round of the national blue-collar job championship WorldSkills Hi Tech. The team comprised the Group’s employees in the 18-28 age group from Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant, Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant, and Rimera’s Izhneftemash and Alnas. All the tasks in the initial selection round were modeled on the WorldSkills international standards. Medals were awarded in five different categories: Mechatronics, Mobile Robotics, Electric Wiring, NC Turning, and Welding Technologies.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 15, 2016. EVRAZ Holding’s West-Siberian Metallurgical Works is going to host the corporate round of the blue-collar job championship WorldSkills in Novokuznetsk for the first time on July 4-8, 2016, EVRAZ Holding Siberia’s press service reports. Professionals from West-Siberian and Nizhniy Tagil Metallurgical Works are going to compete in four most popular blue-collar and engineering fields: Electric Wiring, Production Management, Welding Technologies, and Mechatronics. The WorldSkills standards provide a detailed protocol for the organization of the contest in every

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 15, 2016. A representative of Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation’s Omsktransmash took part in a round table discussion on the ways Omsk-based college graduates and school-leavers can find jobs, the company press service reports. Heads of employment centers for graduates of teacher training colleges and polytechnic schools, management of state-run employment agencies, and representatives of aviation and industrial tech schools also contributed to the discussion. Omsktransmash HR Director Ekaterina Vetchinkina presented her report on how the local employers were actually

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 15, 2016. Yurga Machine-Building Plant/Yurmash (a member enterprise of Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation) offered summer jobs to thirty-five students of Yurga Vocational/IT School, the company press service reports. The young part-timers will work as welders, steel workers, crane operators, and electrical equipment depot mechanics. They will receive induction and training from experts working at the plant’s steel-making and machine assembly departments. ‘The plant has a long-standing tradition of summer jobs and internships. For many of the trainees, this is a good