UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 7, 2016. Prices went down by 0.3% on average on Yekaterinburg existing home market in the last four weeks and by 3.2% compared with the start of the year; on average, the price decrease comes to under 0.1% a week, Ural Real Estate Chamber reports. Compared with the peak prices of February 2015, homes can currently be had almost 11% cheaper. According to the chamber’s Analytical Department, the average asking price of a Yekaterinburg-based existing home came to 68,491 RUR per m2 on July 4. At the same time, some market segments are losing their value faster than

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 6, 2016. Students from Ural Federal University Higher School of Engineering are undergoing their first introductory internship at Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation in Nizhniy Tagil. The company press service reports fourteen students from Yekaterinburg, Perm, Magnitogorsk, Kirovograd, Chelyabinsk Region, and Kirov Region are studying system analysis and management, and this is the first time they find themselves on an actual production site. The internship is coordinated by UFU’s on-site Chair of Machine-Building (set up at Ural Vagon Zavod in 2014). A week-long

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 6, 2016. Director of Burevestnik Central Scientific Research Institute (a member enterprise of Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation) Georgiy Zakamennykh presented three of the organization’s employees with state awards in accordance with the Russian Defense Minister’s order dated May 31, 2016, the company press service reports. Head of Department Sergei Chkalov received the Mikhail Kalashnikov Medal for his involvement in the commissioning of modern weapons and military vehicles. Chkalov has been working at Burevestnik for over two decades now and holds numerous honorary

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 6, 2016. Over 3,500 employees of Nizhniy Tagil Integrated Metallurgical Works (NTMK) and Kachkanar Ore Mining & Processing Enterprise and their children are going to stay at summer camps and health resorts this season, with their trips and stays covered by EVRAZ Holding, the company’s Ural branch’s press office reports. The holding has already directed some 80m RUR to fund the employees and their children’s summer vacations. The kids are going to company camps Baranchinskiye Ogonki in Nizhniy Tagil and Chaika in Kachkanar and to a number of day camps in their

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 6, 2016. Metcombank increased its authorized capital by 12bn RUR; the decision was made at the bank’s annual general meeting, the company press service reports. The increase was made possible due to a new issue of ordinary shares (12m shares with nominal value 1,000 RUR each). ‘The Bank of Russia registered our report on the issue on July 1, 2016. Upon the registration of our share issue report by the state, the bank’s authorized capital officially amounts to 16bn RUR,’ the bank’s press service says. According to Metcombank Chair of the Board Dmitri Torbenko, an

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 6, 2016. Rental prices went down by 4% to 5% in Yekaterinburg shopping malls in the first half of 2016, Ural-Hermes’s research findings indicate. ‘It’s worth noting that prices will keep decreasing gradually enough, as a faster decline is impossible because of high inflation rate in Russia on the whole. This means rental figures will remain almost the same in nominal terms but their actual value will be going down considerably,’ the company states. According to Ural-Hermes’s analysts, quite a few shopping malls are switching from rent to a certain percentage of a

UrBC, Chelyabinsk, July 6, 2016. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) decided to redeem its Series 19 bonds on the day their 6th coupon period ends, July 21, 2016, the company reports. This decision pertains to all the bonds in the issue. The company went through with the 5bn RUR bond issue on July 25, 2013; originally, the bonds were supposed to have been in circulation till 2023.

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk Region, July 5, 2016. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) designed a new product catalogue for carmakers to better suit their needs. ‘The new catalogue with a focus on car parts (http://mmk.ru/auto/) will help our car manufacturing customers choose the particular steel types necessary for this or that part. The catalogue features images of various parts of an actual automobile by one of the Russian carmakers as well as information on the types of MMK steels needed to make them. There are currently fourteen different car parts presented in the catalogue,

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 5, 2016. Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant/ChTZ (a member enterprise of Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation) shipped a bulldozer fitted with a tree plucker to Saratov Region, the company press service reports. The machine is meant for foresters and pipe- and road-builders who need to clear their work sites from trees and stumps. ‘This bulldozer is a serially produced make, but this particular order is a bit unusual in that the machine was purchased by a private farm owner. The customer needed an all-purpose vehicle that could serve both as a bulldozer and a tree plucker and area

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 5, 2016. Nizhniy Tagil Integrated Metallurgical Works/NTMK (a member enterprise of EVRAZ Holding) is now busy with scheduled repairs of its heat and power station, the one that supplies heating and electric power to the city of Nizhniy Tagil, EVRAZ Holding Ural’s press office reports. The company allocated over 250m RUR to get ready for the heating season 2016/2017. Nine power sources are to undergo overhauls: the station’s boiling equipment, two turbine power generating units, the steam-and-air unit, steam boilers, and so on. Additionally, parts of manifolds,

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 5, 2016. West-Siberian Metallurgical Works/ZSMK (a member enterprise of EVRAZ Holding) is holding the company round of the blue-collar job championship WorldSkills, EVRAZ Holding Siberia’s press office reports. The championship will be held on July 4-8, 2016 and will involve teams from ZSMK and Nizhniy Tagil Integrated Metallurgical Works/NTMK. The contesters will have to demonstrate their skills in four categories: Electric Wiring, Production Control, Welding, and Mechatronics. ‘EVRAZ Holding decided to focus on hi tech categories, since these are the industries

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 5, 2016. Pipe Metallurgical Company (TMK) delivered its first set of pipes meant for the construction of oil wells in the Arctic shelf to customer, the company press service reports. The pipes have been made by order of Gazprom Neft Shelf (Gazprom Neft’s daughter enterprise) for Prirazlomnoye oil deposit in the Pechora Sea. The order comprises casing pipes of various sizes with TMK UP PF premium threaded joints and GreenWell dry-dope coating, including H2S resistant pipes with strength grade L80 SS and P110 SS. The pipes were manufactured by Volzhsky Pipe Plant and

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 5, 2016. A steam turbine got launched at the power station in Yekaterinburg’s Akademichesky District; the turbine generator got synchronized with the United Energy System and supplied 7 megawatts worth of power to the network, T Plus’s Sverdlovsk Region branch reports. The turbine was first checked at 3,000 rpm in an idle-run mode, with all its emergency control facilities set up and thoroughly tested. The turbine was brought to its projected capacity and then down to the technological minimum in order to test how efficiently the machine reacts to workload changes at

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk Region, July 4, 2016. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) Trading House keeps selling increasingly more highly durable steel to Krasnodar Territory-based CLAAS, TUCANO harvesters manufacturer. At the moment, 70% of the harvester’s parts are made from Russian steel. The plant and the trading house started doing business together even prior to the launch of the new production departments, when MMK delivered some pilot batches of metal goods to CLAAS plants in Germany. According to the terms of the contract the two parties signed in August 2015, CLAAS gets

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 4, 2016. 35 alumni of ChTPZ Group’s Future of White Metallurgy Corporate Training Program completed their compulsory army term in a unit in Gorny Shchit that the Group curates, the company press service reports. The demobilized alumni will now come to work at the Group’s finishing center for making OCTGs, the steel-smelting Iron Ozone 32 Department, and other pipe-rolling departments of Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant (a member enterprise of ChTPZ Group). It is reported that 142 corporate training program alumni served their army terms in Gorny Shchit in the last four

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 4, 2016. A modern five-axis numerically controlled treatment unit was launched at Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation’s head plant in Nizhniy Tagil recently, the company press service reports. ‘The five-axis cutter head, high torque drives, and linear-axis optical scales allow for very high treatment quality and precision and offer an unlimited range of technological options,’ the press service says. The 2.6 x 4 m working area makes it possible to treat spare parts and billets of almost any size out of the entire existing range. There are three ways for the operator to

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 4, 2016. Yurga Machine-Building Plant (a member enterprise of Ural Vagon Zavod) paid its 85m-ruble tax debt, the company press service reports. ‘The plant is currently undergoing a reformation period to increase its competitiveness and is, for example, producing machines at (almost) prime cost. The company has nearly no funds available, so all the advance payments get directed to salaries and wages and purchasing supplies necessary to make the machines. Despite the economic difficulties, the plant still managed to pay over 85m RUR to Kemerovo Region’s budget in June

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 4, 2016. Sinara Group and Siemens’s joint venture Ural Locomotives produced 2ES6 Sinara freight loco No. 600 in June 2016. According to the Group’s press service, the loco was launched on the eve of the plant’s sixth anniversary on July 1 and went straight to South Ural Railways to be used there. The new-generation DC freight locomotive with a collector traction engine was first designed by the company in 2005; the first loco got commissioned at early as December 1, 2006, and the make later came to be known as Sinara.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 4, 2016. Starting from July 1, Sverdlovsk Region’s living wage is set at 8,862 RUR a month for the non-civil-service sector, up 8% on a year earlier, the constituency’s government reports. The living wage in the civil service, machine-building industry, chemical industry, consumer goods sector, and agriculture will go up on October 1, 2016. The last increase (to 8,154 RUR a month) was introduced in 2015, in two stages. The current living wage comes to 88.5% of the officially determined cost of living in the area for the third quarter of the year (10,008 RUR). The

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 1, 2016. Prices went down by 3% on Yekaterinburg existing home market in the first half of 2016 compared with December 2015, Ural Real Estate Chamber reports. Compared with one year earlier and with the peak prices of mid-February 2015, prices declined by as much as 7.4% and 10.5%, respectively. The average per-square-meter price is reported to come to 68,600 RUR on average at the moment. Prices dropped most noticeably for the centrally located homes, from 97,600 RUR per m2 on average in late 2015 down to 93,900 RUR (-3.8%). In terms of size rather than location, the