Deputy General Director of JSC ZIKSTO Valery SPITSYN:
WE PLAN TO IMPLEMENT A PROJECT FOR PRODUCTION OF 5,000 RAILWAY WAGONS A YEAR
Joint Stock Company ZIKSTO obtained the right to manufacture railway wagons in 2008. In 10 years the enterprise has increased the production volume by almost three fold and the spare parts and components maintenance level by up to 46%. But to fully meet Kazakhstan’s market demand for railway wagons - nearly 7,500 of them are required - it is planned to implement a project on manufacturing wagons on the premises of the ZIKSTO plant. Deputy General Director of ZIKSTO Valery SPITSYN spoke about a new, more upgraded plant in an interview with Interfax-Kazakhstan.
- Valery Dmitrievich, what successes have you achieved since the plant started to manufacture railway wagons?
- ZIKSTO - this is the first enterprise in the country that has obtained the right to manufacture railway wagons. The manufacture of the three types of wagons has been mastered straight away, documents drafted, and the gondola wagon, the grain carrier, 40-foot platform for transport of heavy-duty containers certified and put into service. Over this time, almost 1,500 railway wagons branded “Made in Kazakhstan” have been manufactured, and they run on railway tracks. With the adoption of the state program Lease Financing for the Manufacture of Freight Wagons, the production volume and the demand for wagons have increased very much. If in 2016 the production volume was worth around 6 billion tenge, [then] in 2017 it was already 13 billion tenge (330.67 tenge/$1). This year we plan to manufacture 24 billion tenge worth of wagons.
- During Deputy Prime Minister Askar Mamin’s working trip the project was proposed for the construction of the new plant for production of wagons on the ZIKSTO premises, is it right?
- Yes, indeed. The plant’s current area is 40,000 square meters; we plan to install a new plant in an area of 37,000 square meters. In 1941, when the plant was moved to the current territory, there were production sites. Now these are obsolete buildings 3 meters high and 5 meters deep underground. We will demolish them. This is quite a serious project. Currently a brief task, [technical] conditions, a design and estimates are under scrutiny, we are working on that. And I think that in parallel with the project on production of naval bottom mines as part of the state defense order this will be the two main aspects for the enterprise.
- What is the design capacity of the new plant and will it have counterparts?
- Its design capacity will be 5,000 wagons a year. In principle, such plants already exist. But we want to use their positive experiences and scrap their shortcomings. Now we manufacture all wagons in the shops that have been refurnished. And this causes big production losses, in-house losses, which do not allow for making so much profit. Accordingly, products become uncompetitive; all this will be removed. The most important issue of the construction of the plant is a reduction in the cost price of manufactured products so that they be competitive with regard to enterprises in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus.
- How many types of wagons will be manufactured?
- In the first instance we must meet Kazakhstan’s market demand - 7,500 wagons. These are long-wheelbase platforms for transportation of containers as part of the Western Europe-Western China project, new innovative freight wagons for transportation of grain with a capacity of 120 cubic meters, as well as gondola cars with an increased carrying capacity. But we can manufacture any railway wagons. We can meet Kazakhstan’s demand for the whole range [of railway wagons].
- In your opinion, how much will approximately be invested in the project and is a preliminary deadline for the construction of the plant known?
- Hard to say. Undoubtedly, funds will be partially borrowed, partly our own, which we are now earning. The borrowed money could be both money from a private investor and public [money]. The maximum period that we can afford to build a plant is three years.
- Upon commissioning the plant what would the expected local content rate be?
- The plant envisages 73-76% local content. Practically everything will be Kazakhstan-made. Only one or two items would be left out, in particular, this is heavy steel casting, now the localization rate of which amounts to 43-46% at ZIKSTO.
- Thank you for the interview!
June, 2018
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