The Vyksa Metallurgical Plant (VMZ) is one of the oldest Russian metallurgical centres founded in 1757 by the industrialists, the brothers Andrei and Ivan Batashev. The present-day VMZ facilities were built in the 1970s-80s. Since 1999 VMZ has been part of the United Metallurgical Company (OMK), which invested more than $800 million in its modernisation in 2003-2007.
VMZ is the largest producer of welded piping in the CIS, and the largest producer of large-diameter pipes and railway wheels in the world. It accounts for more than 43% of the Russian market of large-diameter pipes and more than 63% of the Russian market of railway wheels. VMZ and its subsidiaries employ more than 14,500 workers, i.e. almost 20% of the population of the Vyksa District.
VMZ comprises an electrical welding complex for the production of large-diameter pipes, an electrical welding complex for the production of small- and medium-diameter pipes and a wheel rolling complex.
The electrical welding complex for large-diameter pipes comprises the TESA-1020 line (launched in 1992) for the manufacture of 508-1,067mm pipes for long-distance pipelines and TESA-1420 (launched in 2005) for the production of 508-1,420mm piping, as well as four lines for applying three-layer polymer anti-corrosion coating to pipes and one line for applying internal smoothing and anti-corrosion lining.
The production of railway wheels at VMZ was launched in 1973. Today the world's largest railway wheel-making facility produces 820,000 whole-rolled wheels for the railway rolling stock made from special proprietary brands of steel. Every year Russian Railways (RZD) buys more than 600,000 wheels, the rest goes for export to the CIS and other foreign countries.
Since 2004 VMZ jointly with RZD pioneered Russian production of extra-hard wheels, which are more durable and damage-resistant than ordinary ones. They are used in 42% of all the freight carriages in Russia. The service life of such wheels is 12 years compared with 6-7 years for ordinary wheels.
Before 2009 OMK plans to invest an extra 7 billion roubles in the further modernisation of pipe production and 2.9 billion roubles in the wheel production at VMZ. Another major project is the building of a thick-sheet rolling bed (Stan-5000), which started in 2007. The rolling bed will produce 1.2 million metric tons of broad sheet steel a year beginning from 2010, which will fully meet the needs of the large-diameter pipe-making complex for high-quality metal.