After only one day in Izhevsk, Vladimir Putin managed to launch a new electric steel-making facility at the Izhstal plant and inspect the making of Avtovaz cars at the Izhavto plant. The automobile plant's future will be determined either in Tolyatti or in Korea.
The commissioning of the steel-making facility goes as quick as lightning. Vladimir Putin arrives at the Izhstal plant accompanied by Igor Zyuzin, the head of the mining giant, Mechel, of which Izhstal is a subsidiary. It is the same Igor Zyuzin for whom Putin once promised "to call a doctor". Putin greets the workers and pushes the red launch button. With an earthshaking roar, electrodes are put down on the steel-making facility. Thundering and flashing, the first electric arch appears – the steel-making begins. The earth quakes, and the workshop's walls start to vibrate.
This inauguration was part of a reconstruction project for the Izhstal plant in the period from 2007 until 2011 and is estimated to have cost $195 million. The furnace has the capacity to produce 300,000 tonnes of steel each year. The reconstruction will increase the plant's turnover from 11 to 12.7 billion roubles and its net profit from 300 million to 2.5 billion roubles.
It was amid this earthshaking roar, resembling the sound of a couple of jets taking off, that the prime minister had a conversation with the plant's workers. This is why the conversation was rather short. Vladimir Putin asked the workers where they were educated and then signed the plant's memorial book.. When Vladimir Putin and the head of Mechel and Izhstal were walking out of the workshop, dark orange smoke from the new steel-making furnace was quickly spreading all over the workshop. Apparently, the tests of the new furnace's air funnel had not yet been completed, and it was to be commissioned only a few days later, one of Izhstal's executives confessed to Izvestia. Luckily for the plant's managers, Vladimir Putin did not see the commotion and was already on his way to the Izhavto automobile plant.
At that plant, together with Avtovaz President Igor Komarov and head of Sberbank German Gref, the prime minister talked to workers at the assembly line, along which half-ready Lada 2104 sedans with Euro 3 engines were slowly crawling.
The Izhavto automobile plant suspended its production in the spring of 2009 and managed to relaunch only in August 2010. The plant was rescued by Sberbank, Izhavto's main lender and majority shareholder, and Avtovaz had already begun delegating the production of its "classic," rear-wheel drive models to Izhavto.
Vladimir Putin noted these merits at once. Having greeted the workers of Izhavto, he pointed at German Gref, who stood nearby:
"Here is your main lender," the prime minister said and added that he wanted the plant to remain functional.
The workers, too, asked Putin to provide the plant with a sufficient work load.
"We want to do our work, please, give us some," Yelena, a resolute upholsterer, said. "We want to keep working with you as long and as closely as possible."
The prime minister replied that Avtovaz will give an additional production load over to Izhavto.
When Vladimir Putin walked away, journalists asked Yelena what she felt when the prime minister shook her hand.
"Naturally, I was so excited. We thought he would be pretentious, but he turned out to be absolutely normal," she said.
Izhavto will not be confined to making obsolete Lada "classics." These are mainly needed for the car scrap programme, Vladimir Putin said. As soon as December, Izhavto will begin assembling Kia Sorento saloon cars and Hyundai HD commercial trucks. Moreover, Sberbank did not intend to own Izhavto for ages, Igor Kulgan, general director of Sberbank's subsidiary, United Automobile Group, said. Talks are currently underway on selling Izhavto to Avtovaz or to South Korea's Kia and Hyundai.
Talks are currently underway on selling Izhavto to Avtovaz or to South Korea's Kia and Hyundai.
Pavel Arabov