He told TASS in an interview whether there are orders for Sotalia, how many ships and ships USC plans to deliver by the end of the year and how the state defense order is being carried out in the current conditions
The United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) presented a new passenger vessel "Sotalia" in the Neva water area. On the same day, it made its first cruise. Alexey Rakhmanov, General Director of the corporation, told TASS in an interview at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) about whether there are orders for Sotalia, how many ships and ships USC plans to deliver by the end of the year and how the state defense order is being fulfilled in the current conditions.
— Alexey Lvovich, what is the revenue of USC for 2021?
— Last year we were able to get revenue of 375 billion rubles, which is about 11% plus to the result of the previous year. And in principle, the trend for 2022 will be very similar. At the same time, a number of projects have been transferred to subsequent years for objective reasons, so we expect to make up for the non-fulfillment of our business plan in the near future, which, unfortunately, took place, and we hope that, in general, this will give us positive dynamics in terms of our financial indicators.
— Is the main revenue civil orders or GOZ?
— 70% is about the state defense order, plus military—technical cooperation, plus about 21% is civil shipbuilding.
— Did the geopolitical situation affect the implementation of the GOZ?
— Let's just say it affected 0.001%, so we consider it a mathematical error and never say that everything that is happening now has geopolitically influenced the execution of the GOZ. This is the work we do every day. And, as a matter of fact, we try to answer for it with a full ruble.
— What is the share of USC in arms exports? Are there any supplies?
— Yes, of course. We are actively working in the market of military-technical cooperation. I cannot disclose the customers, recently it has been attributed to a certain category of information. But I must say that our work is being carried out systematically, including work within the framework of the license we received for repairs, the supply of spare parts for military equipment delivered abroad. Therefore, we are actively developing this direction and see great potential in it.
— Tell me, how many ships does the USC plan to hand over and how many civilian vessels?
— Good question. In the residual delivery program of this year, we have 11 ships, including repairs, and 19 civilian ones. I hope that these figures will be fulfilled almost 100% militarily. As for civil shipbuilding, there are a number of objective situations that have really been affected by the current political situation. In particular, the units that we ordered and paid for from our European suppliers were not delivered to us. And as a result of the introduction of the fourth, fifth or sixth wave of these sanctions, we could not get this equipment. Therefore, we will have to redesign a number of orders that will need to be transplanted to domestic equipment. This will definitely take time.
— And how much does your products depend on import substitution now?
— In civil shipbuilding, this is up to 50%, of which only 15% is difficult to replace, and the remaining 35% we see and understand the sources, we believe that we have analogues that are adequate in quality and price to those foreign analogues that were previously used in civil shipbuilding.
— What is the current state of the heavy aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov? How long will the repair take?
— The ship docked. Now the procedure for restoring the enclosing bridge will be carried out, after which this dock will be drained, dock work will be performed, including the necessary additional painting of the bottom. And we hope that by the end of autumn it will rise again to the water for the final completion work.
By and large, dock repair means the restoration of all bottom-outboard fittings, the restoration of the shaft line structure, which already makes it conditionally unsinkable. But at the same time, the remaining amount of work, which was revealed by the result of the defect, will take another 2023. Accordingly, at the beginning of 2024, I hope that before the beginning of the second quarter, we will be able to finish all the work on this ship.
— And how much do you estimate the repair?
— I can't say.
— Tell me, because of the geopolitical situation, do you plan to pay more attention to civil shipbuilding?
— I think that we will inevitably have to do this more intensively. Because we really have these failures in substitution, which are beginning to affect the timing and quality of execution of large orders. Of course, in order to insure ourselves and gain technological sovereignty, we need to optimize this work and do it much more consciously and much deeper, so that we can really count on the fact that, no matter what happens in the external environment, we would have enough marine equipment that is necessary for the construction of civil orders.
— Are any new generation ships being designed now that are not similar to those that already exist in Russia?
- of course. They are designed every day. Every week we look at some new products that we offer to the market at our internal meetings. Some of them are brought to the court of possible consumers. In particular, you know that we are showing a civilian pleasure boat Sotalia here. It has already been released on the screens a little. Yesterday we showed a number of governors this vessel, who expressed a desire to buy such vessels. Here, on the Neva River, there is a unique ice-resistant platform "North Pole", which will go to work this fall to the pole. Nuclear icebreakers and many of what are called fishing vessels are also being built here, which are being built at the shipyards of Vyborg, the Northern Shipyard and the Admiralty Shipyard.
— Tell me, if we talk about the "North Pole", how unusual is this development?
— You know, we are not afraid to take on such unique one-time orders, which are very intellectually saturated. The most important thing is to have an understanding that even if desired, nine women will not give birth to a child in one month, this requires perseverance and detailed study. In this case, we have a very competent customer, respectively, the Ministry of Natural Resources represented by Rosgeology, who ordered this vessel and who understand very well all the difficulties of creating such a unique research sample. In general, we are glad that we are doing it.
— How is the modernization of the USC shipyards progressing?
— Everything is going within, firstly, the available allocations. Everything that is provided for by the federal target program and then the state program. At the same time, part of the work is carried out through the so-called credit scheme. Everything is going according to plan. We have no particularly serious backlogs, except for the troubles that we had at the Northern Shipyard, when the second contractor went bankrupt while doing our work. But, thank God, we have legally formalized everything in the necessary way, we have not lost money. But, unfortunately, there is no time to catch up. Therefore, we will have to look for a new contractor now. And the task is to put this facility into operation no later than the second quarter of 2023.
— The USC includes the Feodosiya "Sea" and Rybinsk "Pennant", what is this expansion for?
— Firstly, we have started to actively promote passenger transport. This is one part of the work of "Pennant". And in this sense, specialized factories that are able to build such products. This is the first. The Feodosiysky plant "Sea" is a point that is well suited to us for completion work, as well as for the production of both passenger and military equipment of two technological solutions — aluminum and composite. As a matter of fact, in order to expand our capabilities, these two enterprises appeared in our perimeter. Integration is not very easy, but at the same time we already understand perfectly well what we will do with these assets and what will descend on them.
— A change in Russia's maritime doctrine was recently discussed. Will it affect USC?
— I think so. Because we are fulfilling the will of the state — this is one time. Secondly, we are part of the implementation of this maritime doctrine. And everything that concerns the country will inevitably concern us. Faster or slower, to a greater or lesser extent, but it will definitely be.
— How many companies are working on aircraft carrier projects? And is it even possible to create an aircraft carrier?
— You know, I have been saying for a long time that we are ready to master an aircraft carrier, we understand what needs to be done for this. We are ready to get to work immediately.
— Are you ready to develop service centers abroad in order to serve?
— Yes, of course. This is especially true for military-technical cooperation. We have made specific plans for our key customers, and they will begin to be implemented this fall. We are seeking additional funding from various sources. And in civil shipbuilding, this story with the creation of service centers will be implemented by us together with our largest partners, in particular Transmashholding, which will be our main supplier of internal combustion engines. We will do everything else in the community with our largest suppliers, partly with the help of our shipyards, which produce some of the ship's equipment.
— Are there any design works going on now together with other enterprises?
- no. We are somewhat closed in our perimeter of the group, and we would like to start now to cope with all the inter-factory and inter-branch cooperation of existing enterprises. At the same time, of course, if there is such a need, we discussed these issues with our colleagues from the Gorky Zelenodolsk Plant, with colleagues from the Far Eastern Zvezda. We are ready. Here it is only a question of specifying the parameters of cooperation and understanding what this will give us for our own development. We would not like to just act as a donor for such momentary tactical decisions.
— But are these more civilian projects?
— No, this applies to all types of products, and military, too.
Ekaterina Moskvich was talking
