Russian Naval Shipbuilding Industry: News

Contracts for the construction of ships will be concluded only by the head office of USC - Andrey Kostin
September 13, 2023

VTB Bank plans to radically restructure the work of the management of the United Shipbuilding Corporation . This was stated during the Eastern Economic Forum on September 12 by the head of VTB and the new chairman of the board of directors of USC Andrei Kostin.

“Today the company is, by and large, a collection of individual shipyards that enter into contracts themselves. This won't happen again. We will transfer the customer function [to the head office], contracts will be signed through the head office, and the shipyards will be the production sites. There will be a major reform of the management system,” Business Petersburg quotes Andrei Kostin.

Also, the head of VTB and USC complained about the lack of “normal reporting” by the corporation and said that for the last 10 years the corporation has worked “like a financial pyramid.”

“Audit - once. Additional capitalization - two. Replacement of the control system - three. I think these are priority tasks,” summed up Andrei Kostin.

In the future - modernization of production, introduction of new technologies.

“And gradually, in the next year, we will develop one and a half necessary projects to modernize production, determine where modernization will be carried out, which enterprises need to be modernized, what needs to be done, with whom we will do it, so that in two years we can conditionally begin to introduce new technology, maybe even build new shipyards,” summed up Andrei Kostin.

Let us remind you that before the new year, VTB plans to complete a financial audit of USC’s activities, after which personnel decisions will be made for each enterprise.

Commenting on this process, Andrei Kostin said that there will certainly be an update of the staff: “If the system is changing, then, probably, people are required who are suitable for the new functions, so there will be changes”

https://paluba.media/news/56520

Continuation of the bedlam with the reconstruction of the Northern Shipyard

As the publication "Business Petersburg" reported in Svetlana Afonina's article "Contractor bad luck: the project to create a boathouse at the Severnaya Verf shipyard has been suspended", the project to build a boathouse at the Severnaya Verf shipyard (part of the United Shipbuilding Corporation) has been suspended, and the contract with the third general terminated by the contractor. The general director of the enterprise, Igor Orlov, announced this to “Business Petersburg” on September 19, 2023 during the XVII international exhibition and conference “Neva-2023”.

“The contract with the third contractor was terminated; he was unable to confirm his qualification requirements: he did not provide bank guarantees,” said Igor Orlov.

According to him, now there is a question of introducing amendments to the project, since previously it had a lot of imported equipment, including air conditioning systems, power supply, ventilation and electrical supply.

“Here the question is no longer about the contractor, but about the project as a whole. The previous USC management believed that some issues could be resolved during the completion process: there was a possibility that the contractor could redesign during the construction process. But the first-tier banks said: given, "that the price is obviously higher, we will not give a bank guarantee. None of the first-tier banks agreed to guarantee this project, so it did not work out," said Igor Orlov.

The facility is currently 28% complete. There are high-status interested parties who want to “enter” the project, but they are all waiting for confirmed funding, which is not yet available, noted the head of the Northern Shipyard.

“The boathouse is our pain. It’s impossible to talk about the future of the shipyard without it. Plus, a lot has already been spent to have it. We are in a big dialogue with the state as the main investor of this project in order to find resources for its construction,” he concluded.

Let us remember that two previous general contractors went bankrupt. The first construction contract was signed with St. Petersburg Metrostroy for 6.7 billion in 2017. It was planned to be completed by the beginning of 2019. USC made a second attempt in the fall of 2020, choosing Domestic Systems and Technologies (OST) for 7.8 billion. At the end of 2022, Northern Shipyard entered into an agreement with the third company: RusGuard. The work was planned to be completed in March 2024.


Comment bmpd.
Thus, the Northern Shipyard terminated the contract with the third contractor for the long-suffering project for the reconstruction of this enterprise, which began in 2015. The foundation stone for the new shipbuilding complex of the enterprise was carried out in December 2015.

Let us recall that in 2017, OJSC Metrostroy (St. Petersburg) was announced as the first winner of the competitive procedures for the construction of a new shipbuilding complex at the Northern Shipyard. According to the terms of the contract concluded between the Northern Shipyard and Metrostroy, as part of the first stage of the project, it was planned to construct a slipway platform from two horizontal slipway slabs 250 x 100 meters, covered with a slipway 73.5 m high with overhead cranes with a total lifting capacity of 350 tons, and also the construction of an administrative building. The completion date for the work was February 2019, the contract price was 6 billion rubles, and Metrostroy received an advance of 1.4 billion rubles. However, due to the extremely low pace of work by Metrostroy,

In September 2020, Northern Shipyard signed a contract worth about 7.8 billion rubles with OST to continue the first stage of plant reconstruction, with completion of work in 2022. But already in December 2021, the Northern Shipyard terminated the contract with OST to carry out the first stage of reconstruction of the enterprise, and OST itself is also in a state of bankruptcy proceedings. OST itself stated that it had completed work at the shipyard in the amount of 1 billion rubles. At the beginning of 2022, the overall readiness of the new complex was estimated at approximately 28%.

In December 2022, Northern Shipyard signed an agreementto complete the first stage of reconstruction of the enterprise with the third contractor represented by the private LLC PC RusGard (Rostov-on-Don), which became the only participant and winner of the corresponding open competition. The contract with LLC PC RusGard provided for the completion construction of boathouse columns, installation of floors, building cladding, construction of an administrative building, purchase of machine tools and crane equipment, with the completion date set for March 2024.

The choice of PC RusGard LLC was surprising from the very beginning, since this company officially specialized in the production and sale of filter elements that are used in metallurgy, shipbuilding and ship repair, gas and oil refining industries, mechanical engineering, machine tool building, in the production and operation of road and special equipment , and only as secondary types of activity the company listed “construction work and dismantling and demolition of buildings.” At the same time, the company had only 86 employees, and its revenue for 2021 amounted to 800.9 million rubles, net profit – 13.5 million rubles. Previously, while participating in government procurement, PC RusGard LLC received a total of 123 contracts totaling more than 1 billion rubles.

Apparently, PC "RusGuard" was a dummy contractor for the real contractor, which may have been related to sanctions issues. However, things have not progressed here either, and now the Northern Shipyard requires its fourth contractor to implement the reconstruction program. This story clearly demonstrates the state of affairs in the domestic shipbuilding industry, and in USC in particular. Considering that the management of the Northern Shipyard is now announcing the need to rework the reconstruction project, it is difficult to imagine when this story will end.

Andrey Puchkov: A program will be created for Sevmash and Zvezdochka so that they operate at maximum speed
13 October 2023

The meeting discussed the technical re-equipment of enterprises to increase state defense orders and create civilian products

As part of a working trip to Severodvinsk, Chairman of the Board of Directors of United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) Andrei Kostin , General Director of the Corporation Andrei Puchkov and State Secretary - Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation Viktor Evtukhov checked the progress of execution of the state defense order and the modernization program of the Severodvinsk Production Association Sevmash " and the Zvezdochka ship repair center (part of USC), the press service of the corporation reports.

Andrey Puchkov noted that “there are certain questions regarding loading and prospects.” “I am confident that, working with our main customer, we will be able to formulate a program for the coming years in such a way that enterprises operate at maximum speed,” he noted.

Andrey Kostin said: “ Sevmash is a powerful enterprise that looks confidently into the future. The plant staff carries out the most important task of protecting the defense of our country. The enterprise is undergoing modernization, the shipyard operates on modern equipment, and the territory is in order, which highly characterizes the management of the plant. We see that attention is paid here not only to production, but also to caring about people.”

At Sevmash , managers paid attention to the construction of nuclear submarines (NPS) Emperor Alexander III and Krasnoyarsk. The submarines will strengthen the group of strategic and multi-purpose missile carriers that are already in service. During an inspection of the workshops involved in the creation of two lines of 4th generation nuclear submarines of the Yasen-M and Borey-A projects, General Director of Sevmash Mikhail Budnichenko reported on the ships passing the slipway period and the main part of the tests .

“Today Sevmash is provided with orders through the State Defense Order. This year’s delivery program provides for the transfer of two new nuclear submarines to the fleet, and repairs to the heavy nuclear-powered missile cruiser Admiral Nakhimov continue. I am confident that after the approval of the state armament program, the enterprise will also have a stable load in the long term. It is very important to fulfill orders on time in order to once again prove that this is the leading shipbuilding enterprise in our country and one of the most efficient, I would say, in the world,” emphasized Viktor Evtukhov.

General Director of the Zvezdochka Design Center Sergey Marichev presented a specialized screw-processing production (SVOP) that solves the problem of import substitution of propulsion complexes . He noted that propellers, both Zvezdochka’s own design and those manufactured in cooperation, are used at all latitudes of the World Ocean.

At a meeting with the management of enterprises, the implementation of a technical re-equipment program to increase state defense orders and create civilian products was discussed. In particular, production preparations are underway at Sevmash for the creation of fifth-generation nuclear submarines and the future construction of large surface ships. The machine park, body-welding, machine-building, metallurgical, non-metallic, mechanical-assembly and slipway production facilities are being actively updated. Thanks to the modernization, the Zvezdochka Center for Propulsion Systems has become Russia's leading manufacturer of propellers and propulsion systems for ships of various classes and purposes.

JSC Production Association Northern Machine-Building Enterprise (PO Sevmash , Severodvinsk, part of USC) is the largest multi-industry shipbuilding complex in Russia. The production program is based on four main areas: fulfillment of state defense orders, participation in military-technical cooperation, construction of marine equipment for shelf development and civil shipbuilding, production of products for the engineering and oil and gas industries.

JSC “ Zvyozdochka Ship Repair Center” is the largest ship repair shipyard in the Russian Federation. The company began production activities in 1954. The main areas of activity are repairs, modernization, re-equipment, recycling of ships and vessels, construction of special marine equipment. In addition to the parent organization in Severodvinsk, the Zvezdochka CS includes production branches in the Barents, White, Azov, Black and Caspian seas.

https://portnews.ru/news/354889/

Rodion_Romanovic wrote:
(Zvezda is the largest russian civilian shipyard, in balshoy kamen, about 100 km from Vladivostok) .