| There is another change in management at the Krasnoyarsk Aluminum Smelter (KrAZ). Its director, Ilay Akhmetov, “has been promoted”: he will oversee all new construction at Russian Aluminum. According to Ilay Akhmetov, the holding plans to become “the number one aluminum company in the world” in 2012. He will have to build the second stage of the Sayan aluminum smelter in Khakassia and a new metallurgical plant in Taishet (Irkutsk region).
Australian Duncan Hedic became the new general director of the company. This is the first time in the history of the domestic aluminum industry that a foreigner was chosen as the head of such a large plant. The appointment of Mr. Khedich was not unexpected: he worked for six months as the executive director of KrAZ, and, according to the general director of the Russian Aluminum Management Company, Alexander Bulygin, providing time to get up to speed at the plant was one of the main conditions Australian manager.
Duncan Hedich is considered one of the world's best aluminum industry managers. From 1980 to 1994, he worked as a middle manager at the Australian Alcoa, and in 1994 he went to work for Comalco. For two years, he served as technical director of an aluminum smelter in Invercargill (New Zealand), where he implemented a $450 million project to expand the capacity of this enterprise. In 1996 he became general manager of the sales and marketing department of Comalco, and in 1999 he was appointed general director of the aluminum smelter in Bell Bay.
Mr. Khedich, according to Rusal, was chosen from 30 applicants for the post of head of KrAZ. The Australian manager, in his own words, perceived the offer to head an aluminum smelter in Siberia as a “challenge to his own strengths” - he was seduced by the prospect of bringing one of the largest metallurgical enterprises in Russia to a global level of production. Alexander KLIMOVICH, Krasnoyarsk
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