SUAL Group Commissions New Plant

MOSCOW (RNWire) - SUAL Group has commissioned a new ScovO plant to produce non-stick aluminium cookware. Investments in the project have been worth $16 million.

The ScovO plant is located four kilometres from the town of Stupino, Moscow Region, and was built in 15 months. The plant expects to produce 500,000 units in 2006. In 2007 the plant will begin producing cookware at full capacity at 5.5-6 million units per year. This will help SUAL to more than double the volume currently produced by Demidovsky Consumer Goods. SUAL expects that by 2009 the two plants will produce 10 million units of a wide range of non-stick aluminium cookware – from mass-market to premium-market goods.

In order to use the best global experiences on working with non-stick coating, the company invited Du Pont and Akzo Nobel to advise on the process of building the equipment. In the future they will partner with ScovO and provide the non-stick coating to the plant. The main raw materials for the plant will be delivered from three leading Russian manufacturers of aluminium semi-finished products: Kamensk-Uralsky Metallurgical Plant, Samara Metallurgical Plant and Stupino Metallurgical Plant. The ScovO plant will be certified under the ISA 9001:2000 quality management system and the ISO 14001 environmental management system.

‘The commissioning of SUAL Group’s new enterprise for the downstream business unit is in line with its strategy to focus on manufacturing value-added products,’ stressed SUAL Holding Senior Vice President Vladimir Skornyakov. ‘The downstream production of aluminium culminates the work of all the production divisions and serves our final goal of creating ready-made consumer goods, supplying the Russian domestic market with high-quality products.’

‘The ScovO plant will become a leader in Russian industry in terms of productivity and the variety of technologies used to apply non-stick coating as well as in terms of design and quality, which is especially important for our customers,’ noted the general director of the ScovO plant and Demidovsky Consumer Goods and project supervisor, Inessa Smirnova. ‘The new plant is comparable with the leading West European producers of non-stick aluminium cookware in terms of the high quality and advanced technologies of production. The new design, a wide variety of colours and the high quality of the cookware meet the increasing requirements of Russian consumers.’

Demidovsky Consumer Goods (Kamensk-Uralsky, Sverdlovsk Region) is a leading Russian producer of matte, polished and non-stick aluminium cookware, which is incorporated in SUAL Group. It was established in October 2000.

Demidovsky Consumer Goods was the first in Russia to receive a license by the US’ Du Pont for the production of cookware with world-famous non-stick coatings Teflon®Classic and Teflon®Platinum. The plant’s production, manufactured under the ScovO® trademark has won numerous Russian national competitions, including ‘Commodity of the Year’ and ‘100 Best Russian Commodities’.