Business news

“It is necessary to offer the spare premises to small and medium private enterprises. Tell them they have to offer ideas, take care of end products and sales while we will offer any kind of boards. Brest Oblast has a lot of small businesses and entrepreneurship talents,” noted Andrei Kobyakov. In his words, it is necessary to set up a number of smaller enterprises around the main one. Together all the enterprises should work to secure the effective operation of the entire cluster.

In turn, OAO Ivatsevichdrev Director General Vladimir Shulga stated that the company has to make products with the best value for money.

Summing up last year’s performance, Vladimir Shulga said that they had managed to keep the output figures at the previous year’s level and keep the manufacturing facilities operating at full capacity. “Everything we made was sold both on the home market and abroad. Two months of 2016 demonstrated that the trend will stay in place — new and old sites will operate at full capacity,” he said. The Director General underlined that the company has clear projections concerning sales in H1 2016.

In 2015 OAO Ivatsevichdrev reconsidered its foreign sales strategy. In the past the company used to sell the bulk of the merchandise to Russia. Now a lot of the merchandise is exported to Poland. “We intend to use the following scheme for this year’s sales: 30% for Russia, 30% for Poland, about 40% for other European Union countries, and small amounts for Central Asia. Export accounts for 45% of the total output,” noted Vladimir Shulga.

The Ivatsevichdrev Director General said they intend to do their best to satisfy the domestic demand. The company makes about 300,000m3 of fiberboards. “We own half of the domestic market and intend to raise the share up to 60%,” he stated.

Andrei Kobyakov backed Ivatsevichdrev’s plans concerning the domestic market. “In the last few years the share of imported boards has dropped by roughly 30-40%. It is necessary to continue this trend,” said the Prime Minister.

OAO Ivatsevichdrev is busy implementing a project for developing furniture and sawn timber production. A saw mill was commissioned in November 2014. It is designed to turn out 60,000m3 of round timber per annum if the personnel work in two shifts.

The company started the second stage of the project in H2 2014. For the sake of reducing the costs the company bought second-hand equipment worth €501,800. Taking into account the fact that the construction and installation operations in the furniture parts shop will be finished in H1 2016, OAO Ivatsevichdrev started making furniture parts using spare premises of the old laminating shop in March 2015. In the 12 months the company made Br2,155.4 million worth of furniture and Br3,145 million worth of furniture parts. In September-December 2015 the company chose winners of the tender and signed contracts for the delivery of main and auxiliary equipment for the furniture parts shop. The total sum of the contracts exceeds €2.5 million.