4 July 2024
In the spring of 2024, Deputy General Director of Procurement Ilya Safronov and Head of the Equipment Procurement Department Artem Makarevich made a number of business trips abroad, combining visits to WEPACK exhibitions in Shenzhen (China) and the Paper & Tissue One Show in Abu Dhabi (UAE) with business visits to the plants of pulp and paper sector equipment suppliers. We talked about the results of these business trips with Artem Makarevich, Head of the Equipment Procurement Department of Volga JSC.
“When planning cooperation with Chinese partners and suppliers of spare parts and equipment, which are quite a lot on the market, we always strive to personally visit their production sites to see firsthand how they work, what their reputation is and what they can offer us,” Artem Makarevich said.
– Tell us, what issues did you address in China?
– In China, our goal was to visit not only the largest industry exhibition WEPACK, but also several plants of the largest companies manufacturing “clothing” (forming and dryer fabric, press felt for paper-making machines) and spare parts within the framework of the import substitution program.
Zhengzhou Feltweave Co., Ltd. manufactures large-format felts suitable for our paper-making machine No. 8, as well as forming and dryer fabric, has various international certificates and meets all necessary requirements. The company has already adjusted products supplies to the Russian Federation. After visiting the production premises and discussing potential cooperation with company representatives, we were left with the most pleasant impressions and are considering their commercial offer.
The second company is Qinyang Haozheng Machinery Co., Ltd. is engaged in stock preparation: it manufactures disk filter segments suitable for the equipment of our thermomechanical pulp workshop, and also has a representative office in Russia.
– Did you manage to enter into agreements with Chinese partners?
– Yes, we immediately entered into an agreement with this company for the purchase of a trial batch of spare parts; we are currently expecting delivery to the industrial complex within the next two to three months.
We visited two more companies which production facilities are located in a large industrial hub in Hebei province. One of the companies, Anping Xinpeng Mesh Belt Co., Ltd., which manufactures spiral fabric for paper-making machines, which Volga JSC widely uses and previously purchased only in Europe, did not impress us. The second company is Hebei Hehuang Paper Machine Clothing Co., Ltd. which manufactures forming fabric, pleasantly surprised us with workplace housekeeping and high level of service. The company is expanding its production capacity and building a new workshop for large-format felt production. We are considering the company as a potential supplier for the production of forming and dryer fabric as early as 2025.
– Is it possible to say that since recently Volga JSC has been thinking of China as not only a promising market for selling its products, but also as a developing market for spare parts and “clothing” for paper-making machines similar to Western ones?
– Certainly, the pulp and paper industry is very well developed in China and this is a very promising market for us. Perhaps today the level of quality of Chinese spare parts and components is not as high as in the West, but I think that this is only a matter of time... The Chinese are good at improving their technologies, bringing them to the level required by Russian manufacturers and the first significant steps have already been taken in this direction.
– Tell us about the results of another business trip to Abu Dhabi (UAE), which you combined with a visit to the Paper & Tissue One Show exhibition.
– We have been visiting this exhibition for the second year in a row. In my opinion, this year the exhibition became more ambitious than in 2023: it presented many not only European, but also Chinese suppliers of equipment and spare parts for the pulp and paper sector. We are already familiar with many of these companies and have been doing business with them for several years. In addition, at the exhibition we saw several new and interesting areas for potential cooperation, for instance, with Indian companies.
Based on the results of our participation in the Paper & Tissue One Show, Mr. Umesh Shan, a representative of Bhavi Pvt. Ltd. – a private a dyes manufacturer-export only company, visited our company. We agreed with him on supply of a batch of brown dye, which is used in the corrugating paper production. In the near future, Volga JSC will manufacture a trial batch of products using Indian dye. If the Sales receive recognition for such paper from the buyers, we will continue to do business with this dye supplier.
This opens up new horizons and opportunities for our company to purchase materials and spare parts for equipment that are analogous to Western ones from reliable suppliers.
