ABOUT US

On May 1, 1930, more than thousand of people came to the construction site right away after the festive demonstration and started digging foundation pits for the main facilities of the future plant: a kiln department, a department of raw materials, a mill department, and a heat power plant.

The main civil and erection work was completed in 1932. It made possible to get down to erection and installation of the process equipment that had been bought in Germany. More than 350 experienced scaffold workers, mechanics and electricians came from different cities and towns of the huge country, so the collective was multinational. On the construction site one could hear a lot of languages, because the cement plant was built by workers from Russia and Ukraine, the Baltic countries, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Siberia and Belorussia. The group of the Polish emigrants, who had found a political asylum in the USSR, became one of the leading crews of builders. K. Metman’s crew of carpenters constantly was the leader of the competition. Local workers learnt a lot from them, adopted their methods. German experts supervised the erection and installation work.

A cherished moment of the plant startup was brought closer every day.

This event happened on November 10, 1933. At 16.00 sharp “obzhigaly” (burners) Ivan Kovalev and Phillip Tikhinsky performed the kilns ignition. The country received the first product of the plant – clinker. And in two weeks, on November 23, 1933, the State commission signed the acceptance certificate of Krichev cement plant with the capacity of 130 thousand tons of cement per year. One of the industrial giants of the first five-year period came into operation. Only three years and a half was required for its construction – record-breaking short term for those days.

In 1940 the plant reached to full capacity and gave 130 thousand tons of cement to the country. Over 7 years a close-knit collective was formed. A cement workers' settlement appeared near the plant. There was a secondary school, a club, shops, an outpatient clinic and a chemist’s. A lot of workers got well-appointed apartments for those days.

In response to concern about them, the plant workers increased product yield, undertook heightened obligations. They made grandiose plans for the future. But the war prevented to implement them.

Years went by, time demanded more economical and effective production methods. In the late seventies the technical council of the plant suggested updating the rotary kilns of jumbo size in order to expand their high-temperature zones by means of diameters increasing. The work was finished in a short space of time. The updating of kiln No.4 was finished in 1980, and the updating of kiln No.3 was finished next year. After the reconstruction had been finished, the capacity of each kiln was increased by 3-4 tons of clinker per hour. Taking this fact into account the fifth mill was installed in the grinding shop.

Scientific and technical progress moved the production forward, developed and improved it. Reconstructions were carried out one after another. The outdated equipment was substituted for a new one, more productive. The rotary kilns were shifted to natural gas.

Having made a step into the 21^st century, the plant workers have been continuing to increase the production output year after year. If 1.000.000 tons of cement had been produced in 2006, 1.170.300 tons were produced within the following year. And annual production of asbestos sheeting reached 88,8 million of boards in 2007.

Cement workers coped with the task of national importance for capacity expansion. They put into operation the third clinker burning production line increasing its output by 50%. A new cement plant will be built near “Kamenka” quarry in future.

Uninterrupted work of production lines and capacities developing, expansion of output assortment and its quality improvement allow the enterprise to pay wages in proper time, effect current payments for power consumption, allocate taxes to the budgets of all levels. Return on sale in 2007 was 17,6%, net profit – 13,7 billion roubles.

Along with production activities much attention is paid to labour discipline strengthening, working conditions improvement and higher production standards. “Krichevcementnoshifer” was the first enterprise in its sector that received an ecological certificate. It is a winner and a prize-winner of various competitions. The highest recognition of collective service was the prize of the Belarusian government for high quality in 2004. PRUP “Krichevcementnoshifer” confirmed its status of a prize-winner of this prestigious prize in 2007.