UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 6, 2016. Inflation rate stood at 8.5% in May 2016 against one year earlier, Sverdlovskstat reports. Food items grew 8.2% more expensive, non-food items and alcohol items grew, respectively, 9.6% and 7% more expensive, the price of services went up by 7.7% on average. Compared with April 2016, May 2016 prices rose by 0.4%.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 6, 2016. The telecommunications provider MegaFon’s Urals-based subscribers can now coordinate their daily choices with the mobile trends of their star sign, the company press service reports. MegaFon carried out a unique research, analyzing and identifying customers’ buying preferences when choosing a mobile phone, a subscription plan, or a location against their Zodiac sign. ‘Based on the data provided by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center, every one in three women and every one in five men in this country rely on horoscopes. Some people even plan their

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 6, 2016. Three more companies joined the Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development’s Children Believe in Miracles Project in the first three months of 2016; this means forty-two different companies in twenty-seven locations contribute to the project as of June 1, the bank’s press service reports. Throughout January to March, twenty-four children and twenty-two teachers/parents took part in the Parrot Social Project workshops. All in all, 1,376 people have joined the Children Believe in Miracles Project by the month of May. The Parrot Project came to light in

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 6, 2016. The 11th International Strategic Partnership 1520 Forum in Sochi opened on June 2 with a plenary session on Finding New Opportunities on the Current Market. According to Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation’s press service, the company’s Deputy Director-General Andrei Shlenski presented his report at a panel discussion on balancing the need to cut down costs with long-term planning. ‘Shlenski spoke about innovative approaches to railcar-building as one of the ways to enhance the efficiency of railway freight forwarding and pointed out the company’s development

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 6, 2016. The 4th International KAZAKHSTAN DEFENCE EXPO 2016 Exhibition opened at the Republic of Kazakhstan Air Force Base in Astana. The presentation of Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation and Kazakhstan Paramount Engineering’s joint project combat module Barys proved the entire event’s key feature. ‘The corporation’s Director-General Oleg Sienko took part in the solemn presentation to Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev. He also spoke about the unprecedented 57-mm automatic artillery unit AU 220M made at Burevestnik Central Scientific Research Institute (one of

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 3, 2016. ChTPZ Group Training Center started accepting this year’s applications from candidates willing to get on the Future of White Metallurgy Corporate Training Program on June 1. There are no entrance exams as such, candidates will be selected on the basis of their GPAs, the Group’s press service reports. This year, two hundred state fellowships have been provided for the program to cover the students’ tuition fees. Eligible to apply are students with completed two or four years of high school from everywhere around the country. The Group offers training in metal

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 3, 2016. Russian Copper Company’s Chelyabinsk Region-based member enterprises made 3.210bn RUR in profits in the first quarter of the year, the company press service reports. Aleksandrinskaya Mining Company produced 20,591 WMTs of copper concentrate containing 2,988,000 kg of copper, 45 kg of gold, and 1,774 kg of silver as well as 2,717 WMTs of zinc concentrate containing 859,000 kg of zinc, 4 kg of gold, and 206 kg of silver. The company’s revenues amounted to 974.2m RUR, its net profit to 102.6m RUR. Mikheyevsky Ore Mining & Processing Enterprise produced

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 3, 2016. Omsktransmash (a member enterprise of Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation) is going to offer summer jobs to forty-eight school-goers aged 14-17 in the three following months. This comes to 20% of all the summer jobs available from local employers, the company press service reports. These seasonal workers will come to Omsktransmash departments as assistant inspectors and amenity planting staff and will be paid 6,000 RUR to 10,000 RUR a month as well as around 1,200 RUR that come from the employment center. The first set of young employees came to the plant on June

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 3, 2016. Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation Director-General and Chair of Association Vagonostroiteley Non-Profit Partnership of Producers and Users of Railway Rolling Stock Oleg Sienko chaired the association’s recent meeting in Sochi, the company press service reports. The meeting was attended by representatives of major railcar-building plants, components and spare parts manufacturers, and research institutes. The agenda of the meeting covered points on the partnership’s further work and the most important tasks for the year 2016. Sienko pointed out that while the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 3, 2016. Kachkanar Ore Mining & Processing Enterprise/KGOK (a member enterprise of EVRAZ Holding) recently commissioned a new iron ore raw stuffs sample-analyzing unit, EVRAZ Holding Ural’s PR Department reports. The new equipment is necessary to ensure quality control at every stage of production. The multichannel X-ray fluorescence spectrometer is used for an express analysis of both the finished products and the raw materials samples. Every ten minutes, the company chemistry lab needs to look at ore, ore concentrate, agglomerate, and ore pellet samples; since

UrBC,Yekaterinburg, June 2, 2016. Ural Airlines are now selling reduced-price airplane tickets to the Crimean Peninsula; this is part of the government-subsidized program to make air travel to and from Simferopol more affordable, the air carrier’s press service reports. Ural Airlines signed a special agreement with Rosaviation to operate these state-funded flights. Under the terms of the program, eligible to apply for the very inexpensive tickets are passengers under twenty-three, female passengers over fifty-five, male passengers over sixty, passengers with Group 1 disabilities and people

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 2, 2016. EVRAZ Holding was a special partner at Case-in, an international engineering championship recently held at Ural Federal University in Yekaterinburg, the holding’s press service reports. The selective rounds of the championship began in different parts of the country in February 2016. In the Urals, the competition attracted students and graduates studying for their BSc, MSc, or PhDs in Ferrous/Non-Ferrous Metallurgy and Materials Science. They were presented with engineering cases based on actual production problems. The contestants’ applications were

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 2, 2016. Workers at Raspadskaya Mine (part of EVRAZ Holding) recently started working on the new longwall 5a-7-30 (over 2,800,000,000 kg of metallurgical coal), EVRAZ Holding Siberia’s PR Department reports. It is estimated that the miners will produce around 250,000,000 kg of coal from the longwall every month. As it happens, the unit 5а-7-30 got commissioned on schedule despite the challenging geological factors. First, a series of dismantling, assembly, and sinking jobs had to be performed, and more than 9,000 meters worth of mine working was needed. Preliminary

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 2, 2016. Uraltransmash (a member enterprise of Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation) was given a year’s worth of defense procurement tasks to meet and will be busy making special-purpose goods, the company’s acting Director-General Pavel Kolesnik said at his meeting with the plant’s trade union members. According to Kolesnik, Uraltransmash has been working stably and meeting its target production figures; the plant has quite a few orders from the Russian Defense Ministry for the production of special-purpose goods and 2S19M2 as well as for the repairs of 2S3M and other

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 2, 2016. Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation’s Director-General Oleg Sienko, Deputy DG Viktor Voropayev, and head of Rosavtodor Roman Starovoyt met to talk about the ways to develop the Russian machine-building industry and import substitution of roa-building vehicles, the company press service reports. Ural Vagon Zavod is expected to start making up-to-date road vehicles on its premises. ‘This is one of Russia’s largest scientific and production facilities comprising metallurgical, railcar-assembling, mechanical assembly, repairs, tool-making and other divisions, which

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 1, 2016. SKB-Bank proved Russia’s 9th largest bank located outside of Moscow or Saint Petersburg in the four months of 2016, the bank’s press service refers to Kommersant.Dengi as stating. The bank was also rated 55th in terms of asset volume (over 122bn RUR as of May 1, 2016). Now only fifty-six of the country’s one hundred largest banks made any profit in the first quarter of the year, including SKB-Bank, with its 490m RUR in profits in January-April 2016.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 1, 2016. First Freight Company’s Yekaterinburg subsidiary held a meeting on railway freight forwarding in the Urals given the shrinking fleet of railcars, the company press service reports. The meeting was attended by representatives of freight forwarders, local authorities, Sverdlovsk Railways, and First Freight Company’s Moscow management team. Sverdlovsk Region Legislative Assembly Vice Chair Anatoly Sukhov said meetings like this served as an efficient discussion platform to talk about current problems and try to find solutions to them. Director of First Freight

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 1, 2016. The construction of the 230-megawatt Akademicheskaya Power Station is almost complete, T Plus Sverdlovsk division’s press service reports. For one, power supply has already been provided for the power start-up of the 110-kilowatt gas-insulated switch gear and a program has been activated for the start-up of the auxiliary transformer for balance-of-plant needs and voltage supply onto 6-kilowatt sections. The water treatment plant was launched the other day, which means the power station will now have a supply of desalinated water needed for the boiler

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 1, 2016. West Siberian Metallurgical Works/EVRAZ SZMK (a member enterprise of EVRAZ Holding) recently introduced a new, unique ammonia-free treatment for wire products, EVRAZ Holding Siberia’s PR Department reports. The up-to-date gas-making units have recently been launched at the plant’s steel-rolling department. This equipment is currently unique to Russia’s metallurgical industry. The gas in used to prevent any dross on the thermally treated wire’s surface. It used to be obtained from ammonia but now the gas will be extracted from natural gas, which means the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 1, 2016. Burevestnik Central Scientific Research Institute (a member enterprise of Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation) hosted an all-Russian Artillery Weapons Development Prospects Conference, the company press service reports. The event was co-organized by the institute together with the Russian Academy of Rocket & Artillery Sciences and the Trade & Industry Ministry’s Weapons, Munitions & Special-Purpose Chemicals Industry Department. The agenda of the conference proved truly vital and attracted representatives of enterprises and organizations researching,