4 August 2022
On August 1, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Entrepreneurship of the Nizhny Novgorod Region, Maxim Cherkasov, paid a working visit to the Balakhna Paper Mill, named "The Volga", to discuss government measures for the industrial enterprises' sponsorship and import phaseout.
The event was also attended by Ilya Tikhonov, Director of the Nizhny Novgorod Region Industry Development and Venture Investments Development Fund, Ruslan Semegen, Deputy Director of the Nizhny Novgorod Region Industry Development and Venture Investments Development Fund, Andrey Kuznetsov – Deputy Head of the Center for Import and Import Phaseout of the Nizhny Novgorod Region, Sergey Lomakin – Deputy Director General of Volga JSC – Director for Economics and Finance, Andrey Gurylev – Deputy Director General for Production, Ilya Safronov – Deputy Director General for Procurement and Alexander Raskatov – Advisor to the Deputy Director General for the Interaction with Public Authorities.
"The loan proceeds will be settled for the technical re-equipment and expansion of the previously prepositioned paper-making machine No. 6. Its launch will bring an additional production capacity of 140 thousand tons of products per year. In addition, project realization will create 172 jobs", the minister declared during the visit.
Also, the Federal Industrial Development Fund approved a preferential soft loan to the "Volga" paper mill for 1.5 billion rubles to implement such ambitious plans. The agreement was signed for a 7 years period
"The light packaging segment is experiencing an economic boost driven by rapidly developing e-commerce,” commented Sergey Lomakin, Deputy Director General of JSC Volga, the Economics and Finance Director. – This is an essential landmark in the sustainable growth of our company and is not the first project we are taking on with the Industrial Development Fund. In 2020, we successfully launched a thermomechanical pulp production line that let us confirm the possibility of successful interaction with the Fund and prove that we can come up with a solution in the most challenging situations".
We supply the products of the paper mill to the domestic market and likewise export it generally to China. Spare and wear parts for production were initially acquired in Europe, and now the company is constrained to look for new suppliers from other countries.
“Basically, we redistributed our purchases to the southeast countries – to China and India,” stated Ilya Safronov, Deputy Director General for Procurement of JSC Volga. – Nevertheless, we have a particular interest in finding Russian equipment suppliers. We started working with the import phaseout center, which assisted us in finding about seven companies in the Nizhny Novgorod region, mainly the metal-processing companies".
Public Affairs Office of JSC "Volga".
