CHEREPOVETS, 12 October (BelTA) – The first batch of loaders has been made by Cherepovets Casting and Mechanical Plant (ChLMZ), Vologda Oblast, Russia using a Belarusian technology, BelTA has learned.
The company's Director General Vladimir Boglayev told reporters that the company started making loaders using the technology borrowed from the Belarusian company DorElektroMash (DEM) this year. As many as 15 vehicles have been made as a test. In the future the Russian company intends to make up to 600 loaders every year. The loaders are used for road construction and general civil engineering operations.
“It is a joint Belarusian-Russian product. The level of manufacturing cooperation is rather advanced,” said the executive.
The loaders will be sold under the ChLMZ brand. Asked whether they will compete with the original Belarusian product, Vladimir Boglayev assured that competition is impossible. The engineering operations required to make the loaders are 100% Belarusian. Apart from that, some components are made in Belarus only.
According to Deputy State Secretary of the Union State of Belarus and Russia Aleksei Kubrin, a manufacturer can benefit more from selling a technology than ready-made products, if the economic calculations are right. First of all, the Cherepovets-based company is licensed to make a specified number of vehicles. If the company decides to make more, it will have to pay more to the owner of the technology. Second, the Belarusian company does not have to provide aftersales service, spending components and human resources on it.
Aleksei Kubrin believes the Belarusian company can use the spare human and financial resources as well as money earned by selling the license to improve its loaders and develop new technologies. In two or three years the Belarusian company will be able to offer a more advanced model to the Russian company and make money again.
Belarusian and Russian reporters were able to visit Cherepovets Casting and Mechanical Plant as part of the media tour meant to highlight Vologda Oblast as the largest Belarusian-Russian mechanical engineering cluster. The media tour had been organized by the Standing Committee of the Union State of Belarus and Russia and the international news agency Russia Today (RT).
