GREIF launched a plant in Perm

Yesterday, representatives of the GREIF company presented a metal packaging plant in Perm. Before this, the nearest Russian GREIF plant, whose products are purchased by Perm chemical and petrochemical enterprises, was located in the village of Beloyarsky, Sverdlovsk region. Perm consumers are confident that products will now become cheaper for them. And the regional leadership believes that the creation of such production “without the participation of the region” indicates the investment attractiveness of the region.
GREIF Corporation is a leader in the production of industrial packaging. The company's sales volume over the past year has exceeded $2 billion. The company has been operating in Russia since 1993, when the first enterprise was created in the village. Beloyarsky, Sverdlovsk region. Greif-Perm LLC was created in 2003; the plant produces 210-liter steel containers for transporting liquids and bulk products.

The presentation was opened by company president Bill Sparks, who announced that today he was celebrating the birthday of another of his children. According to him, GREIF brainchildren already exist in Vologda, Volgograd and the Sverdlovsk region (Beloyarsky village).
The main consumers of containers from the LUKOIL-Permnefteorgsintez company, who had previously bought barrels for oils in Beloyarskoye, presented the “newborn” with a wall clock “to walk together for a long time,” and suggested that now transportation costs have been significantly reduced, which means that the barrels will be cheaper. Suppliers of raw materials (the only ones whose quality is satisfactory to GREIF) - the delegation of the Severstal company - handed over a TV, and Vice-Governor Nikita Belykh came empty-handed, but did not lose his head and said that he was giving the American guests the excellent weather that Perm has.
The official part of the event ended with the cutting of the ribbon, after which those gathered could see the production itself. At one end of the hangar, with a total area of about 2000 sq. m, virgin sheets of steel were dynamically rolled into pipes of equal diameter and shaped; in another, ready-made barrels with Shell and LUKOIL-Permnefteorgsintez logos were packed into containers and loaded into a specially fitted truck. The technological process was presented to the guests in full - one barrel was even tested for strength by dropping it down from a height of one and a half meters. The design was somewhat deformed, but the experiment was considered successful. The enterprise is capable of producing about 400 such barrels per hour.
“The workshop previously belonged to the Uralstalkonstruktsiya company, but was completely re-equipped,” explained Tatyana Gutorova, head of the Greif-Perm commercial department. “The Americans invested about 3 million euros in Perm production. The operators were trained by GREIF supervisors from Germany, Holland and France,” explained Konstantin Savinov, executive director of the enterprise.
He also added that the top management at the Perm enterprise is still common with the enterprise in Beloyarsky, since the plant in Perm was conceived as its copy, only more powerful (the capacity of the enterprise in the village of Beloyarsky is about 160 barrels per hour). All customers of the Beloyarsk plant - Perm enterprises LUKOIL, Solikamsk Magnesium Plant, Avisma, Solikamsk Desulfurizer Plant - were deliberately transferred to the Perm neighbor.
Mr. Belykh explained that Perm consumers will account for no more than 12-15% of the total production volume, so the company will develop Russian open spaces. Mr. Savinov said that expansion is planned in the Volga region and Siberia. In the near future, GREIF plants will be built in Omsk and Irkutsk. And Beloyarsk GREIF will work for consumers from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
The Americans, as Vice-Governor Belykh noted, were satisfied with the production. They are dissatisfied, according to him, with customs, but the Perm region will not be able to influence this. Apparently, they also appreciated the location of the enterprise, from time to time happily explaining to each other that already outside the fence of the plant there was a railway track along which their goods, after a few kilometers, would go straight to LUKOIL-Permnefteorgsintez.
NADEZHDA EMELYANOVA

Kommersant (Perm) No. 121 from 07/07/2004

Barrels have become closer to oil workers