UrBC, Asbest, January 13, 2020. Some thirty Kyrgyzstan nationals qualified and work as charge makers at OOO FORES’s Asbest branch. The training took about five months to complete, the company’s press service reports. ‘There are over 1,100 people working at FORES’s Asbest branch at the moment. 75% of them are Asbest natives, the rest come to do their shifts from nearby towns and villages. In 2019, more than a hundred new jobs were created at the plant, but we still have blue-collar job openings because of the natural staff turnover,’ the company says. In September 2019, the company accepted

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, January 13, 2020. MMK Group’s trade union launched a special program for the trade union members’ children during New Year’s break, Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) Information & PR Department reports. New Year Tram cruised the streets of Magnitogorsk every day, giving the children an opportunity to get a ride, have fun, and learn some interesting facts about Magnitogorsk. More than 2,000 people took part in the project. New Year Tram is an edutainment project that MMK Group’s trade union has been running for the second year in a row. According to Chair at MMK

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, January 13, 2020. Ural Airlines introduced new flights from Yekaterinburg and Tyumen to Hainan, China this year. The new flights will become available in February 2020: Yekaterinburg-Haikou flights will get operated every Thursday starting February 6; Tyumen-Haikou flights will get operated every Friday starting February 7; Haikou-Tyumen flights will get operated every Friday starting February 7; Haikou-Yekaterinburg flights will get operated every Saturday starting February 8. All flights will get operated on the new Airbus A321neo with a tech stop in Novosibirsk, the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, January 10, 2020. EVRAZ Holding supplied 4,500,000 kg of rolled metal goods for the construction Baikal Ice Palace in Irkutsk, EVRAZ Holding Ural’s Corporate Communications Center reports. The highly durable steel was used for the primary framework components of the prospective sports facility. EVRAZ NTMK’s wide-flanged, hot-rolled H-beams in the 20Sh1 to 60Sh3 range were used for the bearing components and flooring. EVRAZ ZSMK’s heat-treated reinforcement bars A500S (diameter: 10 mm to 25 mm) were used for reinforcing concrete frames. ‘EVRAZ NTMK makes over 300 different

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, January 10, 2020. Forty employees of ChelPipe Group won the company’s Talent Pool Contest, the Group’s press service reports. The company’s white-coated metallurgists got awarded for their work achievements and loyalty to corporate values in the following categories: Professional of The Year, Efficiency Improver, Achievement, Healthcare, Reliability, Involvement, and Creation. ‘The winners belong to the key metallurgical professions: mill rollers, boil-makers, drawers, arc welders, electricians, repair technicians, foremen, section managers, and so on. The winners’

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, January 10, 2020. Seventy schoolchildren from Sukhoi Log and Kuryi spent their New Year’s break at Kuryi Country Resort and are now back home; OOO FORES paid for their stay, the company’s press service reports. The trips were funded for forty children of OOO FORES’s Sukhoi Log and Kuryi branches’ employees and for other thirty children from Sukhoi Log and Kuryi schools. ‘The children got to ski, practice at dance and singing clubs, play board games, compete in a Best Brigade Name & Logo Show, make posters, greeting cards, and handicrafts, and create drawings. There

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, January 10, 2020. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) power station is working on a cost accounting project, MMK’s Information & PR Department reports. ‘The plant’s power station keeps working on a cost accounting project at micro-cost-center level; this is done within the framework of MMK’s strategic initiative on Personalized Resource Management. The goal is to improve cost accounting and introduce efficiency competition into the field of resource use,’ the company says. The power plant has been focusing closely on energy efficiency and cost accounting for a

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, January 10, 2020. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) coordinated the Best in Profession job skills contest for young workers, MMK’s Information & PR Department reports. ‘This is one of the oldest company contests Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works has been running. The goal is to enhance the prestige of blue-collar jobs and to help workers improve their professional skills. Eligible to compete are MMK and MMK Group’s young workers in the under-30 age group with at least one year’s work experience,’ the company says. This year, the contest unfolded in two

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