April 2, 2015. Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant (PNTZ, a member enterprise of ChTPZ Group) delivered 104,700 kg of 139.7x10.54mm casing pipes with gas-proof, first-generation ChT-VC Premium threaded joints to Gazprom Dobycha Nadym. According to ChTPZ Group’s press service, based on the customer specifications the cold-resistant pipes were provided in two strength grades, E (90,000 kg) and P110 (14,700 kg). The first shipment of the pilot batch was sent to Gazprom’s natural gas deposits in 2014. After the trial runs were successfully completed, Gazprom placed an order for more; the pipes were made

April 1, 2015. Ural Airlines won the national Russian Wings Prize once again: the air carrier won in Domestic Flights and E-Commerce categories for the year 2014, the airline’s press service reports. The awarding ceremony (the eighteenth one since the prize was established) took place at the Renaissance Moscow Monarch Center Hotel in Moscow. 38 Russian and 58 foreign air carriers, as well as 13 airports and other companies in the civil aviation sector, competed for the prizes. Winners were selected by secret ballot by members of three expert groups. The Russian Wings Prize was founded by the

April 1, 2015. This April, ChTZ Uraltrac (a member enterprise of Uralvagonzavod Corporation) is going to make and deliver to its customers six bulldozers which will be named after the prominent Urals-based home front workers who contributed greatly to the development of the defense industry during war times. According to Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s press service, the bulldozers will bear the names of Soviet statesmen who were involved in the Southern Urals’ tank-making industry. ‘Head of the Communist Party Chelyabinsk Region Committee, who took part in the development of the area’s

April 1, 2015. SKB Bank keeps expanding its ATM network in Saint Petersburg. The new branch, the third one in Saint Petersburg, started operating in Ozerki (one of the city’s busiest districts) recently, the bank’s press service reports. The branch is located very close to Prospekt Prosveshcheniya Underground Station (136 Engels St Bldg 1A). The place is open for private customers from 9AM to 7PM on weekdays and from 10AM to 4PM on Saturdays; business customers and sole traders are welcome to come from 9AM to 4PM on weekdays. The branch presents a new office format with modern design,

April 1, 2015. Renting an office in Yekaterinburg grew cheaper in the first quarter of the year; the market supply in the sector is also on the rise, Ural Chamber of Real Estate’s Konstantin Oktayev told UrBC. ‘18% of all Class B offices in the city are now available for tenants (up 4% on the last quarter of 2014); the same is true of 20% of Class A offices (-3%) and 12% of Class B+ ones (+1%). This increase in the market supply has to do with a lot of new office buildings that got commissioned in the first quarter of 2015,’ Oktayev explains. The analyst says that average rental rates have

April 1, 2015. Pavel Turkov, a setter-up of numerically controlled machines at Ural Locomotives, won the third prize in a professional skills contest called Glory to the Man of Labor!, Sinara Group’s PR Center reports. According to head of Ural Locomotives HR Department Andrei Pryakhin, the event is a very important one for the company. ‘Our company currently runs its own employee training system. NC machine operators and setters-up are the people today’s machine-building really needs,’ he said. Local contests winners from machine-building enterprises based in Kurgan, Sverdlovsk, Tyumen, and

April 1, 2015. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) managed to decrease its expenses by $524m last year thanks to united efforts of all the production and administrative divisions. The company reports this was made possible due to improved organization of labor during large-scale repairs and equipment upgrades ($75m), improved supply chains, more efficient composition of raw materials, and better coordination of technical jobs ($57m), reorganization of maintenance procedures and implementation of innovative materials ($114m). Cutting down on managerial expenses resulted in another $8m in

March 31, 2015. Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s head plant got a visit from representatives of Azerbaijan Railways, who came to meet with the corporation’s Director-General Oleg Sienko. According to the Russian holding’s press service, this visit contributed to the agreement on supplying various modifications of freight cars to Azerbaijan Railways which the two parties signed in March 2015. Uralvagonzavod has received specifications for the first 600 freight cars and 300 tanks since the moment the contract was signed. The first set of 12-132 gondola cars and 15-150-04 tanks has already been

March 31, 2015. A robot-aided stamping unit meant for making blanks of box-and-pin joints was launched at Orsk Machine-Building Plant (a member enterprise of Pipe Metallurgical Company/TMK) on March 27, TMK press service reports. The launching ceremony was attended by Governor of Orenburg Region Yuri Berg, TMK BOD Chairman Dmitri Pumpyanski, Mayor of Orsk Viktor Frantz, TMK Director-General Alexander Shiryayev, and the plant’s long-service employees and other workers. The unit is meant for making precise stamped blanks that will be used to manufacture box-and-pin joints with the help of

March 31, 2015. A Lufthansa airplane going from Beijing to Munich had to make an emergency landing at Yekaterinburg’s Koltsovo Airport because one of the passengers was not feeling well, the airport’s press service reports. ‘The plane on Beijing-Munich flight had to make an emergency landing at Koltsovo because one of the passengers suddenly felt extremely unwell,’ says Koltsovo Airport’s press officer Dmitri Tyukhtin. According to Tyukhtin, a decision was made to take the passenger to a local hospital after the plane had landed.

March 31, 2015. The average price of a square meter in a new apartment in Yekaterinburg might go down by 5% to 10% by the end of 2015, Ural Chamber of Real Estate’s Executive Director Rustem Galeyev announced at a press conference. ‘We expected a 60% drop in demand before the government support program was adopted; now we think the drop will probably reach 30%. This will bring the housing prices down a bit. The government program’s main weakness is its focus solely on the new homes market,’ Galeyev says. The expert believes this focus will disrupt the existing financial chains, as many

March 31, 2015. The Bank of Russia carried a rating of banks that are important players in the payment services sector; there are fifty-one businesses on the list, including SKB Bank, the bank’s press service reports. Under the Bank of Russia’s Decree 3439U (dated November 6, 2014), a bank is classed as an important payment services market player if its share of credit/debit card transactions, the number of credit cards issued, or the number of ATMs, POS terminals, and imprinters in one of Russia’s federal districts comes to more than 2% of the total number of those. Under the National

March 30, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region Prime Minister Denis Pasler paid a visit to Uraltransmash (a member enterprise of Uralvagonzavod Corporation). According to the corporation’s press service, the enterprise’s Director-General Alexei Nosov informed the official of the development of affairs at the plant, with a focus on the tram production and their work on the new-generation tram R1 in particular. Uraltransmash had its tram production facilities rebuilt over the last two years; besides, the newest equipment was purchased for the mass production of 71-409, a low-floor, three-section tram; this

March 30, 2015. Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s head plant is putting up a new lab to give students at Nizhniy Tagil Machine-Building School (a subsidiary of Ural Federal University) an opportunity to practice. This is part of the company’s social partnership program. The corporation’s press service explains the lab will house a milling and turning class and will be fitted with a software-controlled turning machine. The lab will contribute to the company’s united educational system program which aims to train a highly skilled worker that Uralvagonzavod and other Russian defense enterprises need.

March 30, 2015. Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant (ChTPZ) is going to supply 10,000,000 kg of large-diameter pipes for the construction of the Beineu – Bozoi – Shymkent gas pipeline in March and April. The pipeline is being built by the Republic of Kazakhstan and the People’s Republic of China, ChTPZ Group’s press service reports. Under the terms of the contract, ChTPZ Group will provide their customer, Beineu – Shymkent Gas Pipeline, with 1,067-mm pipes (wall width 11.9mm) with three-layer corrosion-resistant outer coating made of X70 MMK steel. All of the pipes for the order will be

March 30, 2015. Yekaterinburg housing market supply has been growing steadily over the last two months, even though the price fluctuations have remained insignificant, Ural Chamber of Real Estate’s press service reports. The number of apartments and rooms offered for sale through the Chamber’s database went up by 15% in February: there are currently more than 9,000 apartments and nearly 1,400 rooms in communal apartments that can be purchased in Yekaterinburg. Besides, it now takes up to five months to get a place sold. Housing prices, however, haven’t been changing in any noticeable way,

March 30, 2015. The third round of WorldSkills Sverdlovsk Region came to an end in Pervouralsk today. Contests were held at ChTPZ Group Training Center, which specializes in training its students in the five skills WorldSkills requires: mechatronics, mobile robotics, operation of numerically controlled milling and turning machines, and welding technologies. Winners were selected based on their performance in the three-day contest, ChTPZ Group’s press service reports. Students on the Group’s Future of White Metallurgy Program proved the strongest in the Mechatronics and Mobile Robotics

March 27, 2015. Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s head plant in Nizhniy Tagil launched DECT, a microcell network, at its metallurgical, railway carriage assembly, and mechanical assembly departments. ‘The new system makes control more efficient and helps make all the jobs safer. It is also meant to prevent accidents or reduce their impact on the production processes through clear administration and immediate notification of emergency services,’ the company says. It took several years to introduce DECT at the plant. The first fifty-subscriber station was launched at Uralvagonzavod’s power station

March 27, 2015. Russia’s Sberbank went three positions down in the Forbes banks’ reliability rating for the year 2015. The bank is now placed 8th on the first-group-reliability list. Remarkably, Nordea Bank, Citibank, HSBC Bank, BNP Paribas, Crdit Agricole CIB, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and MSP Bank were all ahead of the country’s largest bank in this rating. Citibank, however, was also demoted from the first to the second place. Forbes analysts explain that the most reliable banks operating in Russia at the moment are daughter enterprises run by foreign banks. ‘This year, the

March 27, 2015. 75 management companies in Sverdlovsk Region housing services and utility sector owe more than 2.536bn RUR to heat and power suppliers (including 2.36bn RUR owed for heat energy and 167m RUR owed for electric power supplies). Yekaterinburg companies’ share is currently the largest, as they owe suppliers 1.2bn RUR, Sverdlovsk Region division of EnergoSbyT Plus’s press service reports. ‘The amount of money owed to resource suppliers exceeds our retooling and repair budgets by many times. Practices adopted by some unscrupulous management companies pose a formidable threat both to