April 23, 2015. Over 250 residents of Sverdlovsk Region were deceived by a company that promised to pay off their bank loans, Sverdlovsk Region division of the Internal Affairs Ministry’s press service reports. The police say the swindlers operated in Yekaterinburg, Verkhnyaya Salda, Nizhniy Tagil, Nizhnyaya Tura, Kachkanar, Krasnouralsk, Serov, Severouralsk, Kushva, Kamensk Uralsky, and Krasnoturyinsk. ‘Victims signed an agreement with the company to provide 50% of the original loan sum, while the firm promised to pay the bank in full,’ the press service says. The company offices closed down

April 23, 2015. Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation is taking part in TranRussia, a major international transportation and logistics services and technologies exhibition at Krokus Expo in Moscow. The exhibition opened on April 21. This is the second time the corporation and its daughter enterprise UVZ Logistic have joined the exhibition. UVZ Logistic has managed to become a major railway shipments market player and one of Russia’s top five freight forwarders with 42,000 freight cars since the day it was founded four years ago. Uralvagonzavod Corporation presents its

April 23, 2015. Yekaterinburg Radio Equipment Plant might decide not to pay any dividends for the year 2014; this is what the Board of Directors suggested that the shareholders vote for at the annual general meeting. ‘Our recommendation is to support the proposed profit distribution scheme and not pay any dividends for the year 2014,’ the plant reports.

April 23, 2015. Refinskaya Power Station (a member enterprise of Enel Group) is responsible for one-third of the overall environmental pollution caused by Sverdlovsk Region-based enterprises, Interregional Environmental Prosecutor Larissa Larina said in her interview to UrBC. ‘Companies in the energy sector are the primary pollution agents in our area, and Reftinskaya Power Station is the biggest problem. The station still produces 33% of all the harmful emissions in Sverdlovsk Region. A scheduled inspection was carried out there last year, with Rospotrebnadzor checking its compliance with

April 23, 2015. Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s head plant hosted an off-site meeting of Sverdlovsk Region Legislative Assembly. Members of Social Policy and Infrastructure Development & Housing Policy Committees talked about ways in which large industrial companies and government authorities could cooperate to promote social partnership and improve the city infrastructure, the corporation’s press service reports. Uralvagonzavod HR Director and Nizhniy Tagil Duma deputy Sergey Saranchuk said the plant was implementing its Social Development Program, with focus on physical education and

April 22, 2015. Uralvagonzavod Corporation developed KTsKh-PKM25/0.4, a new tank container with barrel made of composite materials. According to the corporation’s press service, the tank container has no counterparts anywhere else in the world and is a promising new product that will enjoy great demand on the isotainer market: at the moment, the only containers available for multimodal freight forwarding are steel ones. The innovative tank container is meant for transportation of hazardous cargo (including hydrochloric and ortho-phosphoric acids and natron) by automobile, sea, and 1,520-mm

April 22, 2015. Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant/PNTZ (a member enterprise of ChTPZ Group) coordinated the second audit procedure at its aviation goods department and its authorized central testing lab. The audit was conducted by Material (an agency approved by the Interstate Aviation Committee’s Aviation Register), PNTZ press service reports. The company says the Interstate Aviation Committee experts spoke very highly of the plant’s data selection, processing, and analysis system, its unfailing product quality and technology, and great skills of the staff in charge. At the end of the audit

April 22, 2015. Russia’s GDP dropped by about 2% in the first quarter of 2015 compared with a year earlier, Interfax refers to Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev as saying at the State Duma meeting on Tuesday. According to Medvedev, the industrial output decreased by 0.4% compared with Q1’14. ‘All this isn’t the worst of the possible scenarios. To be frank, the situation with prices, unemployment, the banking system, and many branches of industry could be more complicated and threatening,’ Medvedev said. He added that the country had gone through ‘much more serious problems’ in 2009, when its GDP

April 22, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region’s stock of cattle went down by 1.3% (278,900 head of cattle) in March 2015 compared with March 2014, Sverdlovskstat reports. Pig livestock came to 332,400 (-1.3%), that of sheep and goats came to 64,600 (-3.8%), while poultry stock rose by 3.8% and amounted to 13.8m.

April 22, 2015. 20% of Yekaterinburg residents are planning to go abroad for their vacations this year, E1.Rabota’s research team states. 25% intend to stay in town, 31% will head for their dachas or countryside B&Bs, and 24% of respondents said they are going to travel around Russia. Based on the last year’s survey findings, 18% of Yekaterinburg dwellers haven’t had a vacation for over two years, and 9%of those surveyed said they only used 50% of their vacations. 42% take some time off conventionally, that is, for two weeks twice a year. 14% of respondents said one month’s paid holiday

April 21, 2015. Uralvagonzavod and Uraltransmash (member enterprises of Uralvagonzavod Corporation) organized training sessions for the tank crews who will operate their vehicles during Victory Day Parade on May 9. According to the corporation’s press service, the crew members were selected from among the candidates who had the best technical skills for driving military vehicles. ‘Forty tank troopers (eight officers and thirty-two private soldiers) from Naro-Fominsk Unit in Moscow Region trained at Uralvagonzavod and a group of military officers from Western Military District trained at

April 21, 2015. Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s head plant coordinated its annual improvement proposals contest; over three hundred workers from the plant’s 55 departments took part in the competition this year. ‘Our target improvement figures were exceeded by 3.13 times. All the departments and workers who contributed to this received money premiums,’ the corporation’s press service says. 310 improvement proposals were adopted by the plant in 2014 against 288 proposals a year earlier. This resulted in 65.3m RUR in savings (against 48.3m RUR in 2013). Additionally, the company spent 377,100 kg

April 21, 2015. The Key to Success, ChTPZ Group’s motion picture, won the first prize in the first Russian Man of Labor Film Festival, the Group’s press service reports. The prize was awarded by Plenipotentiary Representative of Russian Federation President in Ural Federal District Igor Kholmanskikh and Russian Federation Hero of Labor Konstantin Chumanov. The Key to Success is a movie about The Future of White Metallurgy, the Group’s unique educational project implemented in cooperation with Sverdlovsk Region Government and Pervouralsk Metallurgical School. The movie focuses on the

April 21, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region Labor Department expects the local unemployment rate to increase by nearly two times this year, the department’s deputy head Natalia Bordyugova said at a press conference. ‘There are currently 32,000 unemployed people in the Mid-Urals. According to our forecasts, the figure could go up to 56,000 people in the short term. Unlike in 2008 and 2009, the government has not been supporting troubled enterprises on a large scale,’ Bordyugova said. According to the official, the official unemployment rate in the area has risen by 25% since the beginning of the year so

April 21, 2015. More than 370bn RUR were invested in Sverdlovsk Region’s fixed assets in 2014, which exceeded the figures for a year earlier by 3%, Governor of Sverdlovsk Region’s Infomration Policy Department refers to Governor Evgeniy Kuivashev as stating. ‘This was the seven largest amount of investment among all Russian federal constituencies. In 2013, we were in the ninth place. By the end of this year, fixed asset investments will come to over 22% of the area’s GDP,’ the Governor said.

April 20, 2015. Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev signed a decree appointing Viktor Koksharov Rector of Ural Federal University, the official legal information website states. Koksharov’s contract expired on April 8, 2015, along with the terms of ten UFU vice rectors. It wasn’t clear until the end of last week whether the Russian Education Ministry would renew the contract. On April 13, a decree issued by Education Minister Dmitri Livanov reappointing Viktor Koksharov Rector starting from April 9, 2015, arrived at the university.

April 20, 2015. Head of Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant/ChTPZ Tube Rolling Department Evgeniy Gaas presented the plant’s White Metallurgy Production System at the 10th International Pipe Manufacturers’ Congress. According to the plant’s press service, Gaas has been contributing to the project since the day it was launched. He worked at Vysota 239, the system’s pilot department, assisted Vladimir Putin in the department’s opening ceremony in 2010, and was appointed head of the department at the age of twenty-six in 2012, which made him the youngest manager in the Russian metallurgical sector.

April 20, 2015. Yekaterinburg scored 11th in the rating of Russia’s most migrant workforce-appealing cities. RBC research involved cities with population of more than 150,000 people, the agency indicates. This place in the rating means Yekaterinburg is one of those cities where the number of working people exceeds that of its residents: the figure currently stands at 103%. ‘Companies provide data on their employees’ income tax depending on where the company is located and regardless of where an employee’s residence address is. This means the more taxpayers there are in a city’s database, the

April 20, 2015. ChTZ Uraltrac (a member enterprise of Uralvagonzavod Corporation) is going to supply five B14 bulldozers to Vietnam, the corporation’s press service reports. The vehicles with moisture-insulated equipment and high quality coating that can withstand tropical temperatures will be shipped to customers as soon as in May. The plant’s Head of CIS & International Sales Alexander Sergeyev says the delivery contract was signed in December, but the letter of credit was only made available in March due to sanctions imposed on VTB Bank. ‘To make sure the agreement can go through, our

April 20, 2015. Kamensk Uralsky Foundry Plant/KULZ (a member enterprise of Uralvagonzavod Corporation) took on a number of young workers with less than one year’s experience, the corporation’s press service says. ‘Several scores of young workers gathered together at the company’s assembly hall; some of them started working as recently as a month ago. These are blue- and white-collar workers under thirty-five years of age from the plant’s non-ferrous casting, pig-iron casting, mechanical, assembly, molding, repair, galvanothermic, electrical, water supply, transport, and technical control