Alexey Rakhmanov — about the corporation's plans and the potential for the development of domestic tourism in RussiaThe development of the Russian tourism industry has become one of the leitmotives of the Eastern Economic Forum (WEF).
Alexey Rakhmanov, head of the United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC), spoke about how domestic tourism can develop thanks to shipbuilding, about new passenger ships, interest in the company's projects from foreign customers, as well as about big plans for the construction of cargo and passenger ships in an interview with TASS.
— We meet with you in an era of change. Yesterday, the State Council discussed the need to develop domestic tourism. Can you tell us how USC will contribute to this?— You know, we have a lot of ideas.
Let's start with the fact that the Russian domestic cruise fleet has long been in need of renewal. The general support of tourism and travel in Russia is an indisputable incentive to expand our competencies. Our six design bureaus, which are able to design and build ships and ships, will be able to come out with projects that are interesting for citizens. And in this case we are talking about a very wide range of passenger transport, starting from small forms (for example, the Sotalia, which we showed in St. Petersburg this year) and ending with large cruise liners.
— What new passenger ship projects are you currently developing? — This week the flag was raised on the ferry "Alexander Deev".
This is also a kind of passenger transport history. Comfortable cabins have been created for 200 passengers, taking into account the navigation region and all-weather conditions of this vessel. "Alexander Deev" is a car—railway ferry for the sea strait between the mainland and Sakhalin, and not a cruise liner for tropical waters. Therefore, we solved a utilitarian task, but we believe that even in this case, the level of comfort for passengers there is a confident "three stars".
We also have an order for three river-sea class cruise ships with the working name "Karelia", they are made according to the so—called optimized PV300 project (the Mustai Karim cruise liner has already been built according to this project - approx. TASS). The vessel is planned to have a capacity of 170 passengers.
Moreover, together with the St. Petersburg "Marine Facade" (urban development project, including the alluvium of the artificial territory of Vasilievsky Island, as well as the creation of a passenger port — approx. TASS) we have been hatching the idea of building a large cruise liner for the Baltic for a long time. Now, most likely, you will have to rely mainly on your own strength. At the same time, we understand how to approach this construction site.
— Is there a potential customer for Karelia now? — Everything is very accurate there, there is a specific customer.
We hope that this project will be mutually beneficial both for us and for our customers. Before signing all the final documents, I cannot disclose the customer.
— Is there a further expansion of the production of this type of vessels in the company's plans?— Now it is a series of three vessels.
In order to try out and work out new concepts. I hope that after these vessels are built, then we will be able to understand how to expand the serial production of such vessels.
— And, for example, the cruise liner "Peter the Great" will go into mass production?— We would really like to.
But during the construction of the PV300 vessels, instead of making the first head, and the second serial, we eventually got the construction of two head vessels. They are fundamentally different in their ideology and differ greatly in the level of technical equipment. The only thing they are close in is passenger capacity and comfort level. That is, we are talking about a confident "four stars plus" in both cases. But at the same time, the seaworthiness of the PV300, which is being built in Astrakhan, is higher than that of the vessel that was built in Nizhny Novgorod. It turned out, in fact, two vessels of very different projects. But in order to be economically profitable, such projects must become serial.
— As part of SPIEF-2022, USC presented the Sotalia vessel, which interested representatives of the regions. Is there an approximate understanding of when the serial production of "Sotalia" will begin?— We are already ready for the serial production of Sotalia.
Digitization of this project is coming to an end. We are preparing to produce this vessel not only at our USC shipyards, but also to give it as a franchise to those shipyards that would like to build it. We are ready to give them an almost complete mat package and a set of technical documentation. All this can allow us to quickly increase the number of vessels produced by the Sotalia project.
We did a very good job at the St. Petersburg Forum and showed Sotalia to a large number of regional delegations. For various reasons, priority was given to Nizhny Novgorod, which will probably launch the first trial regular flight of Sotalia between Strelka and Chkalovskaya Stairs in Nizhny Novgorod on September 15.
— Did any other regions like this vessel?— Conversations on the issue of the acquisition of "Sotalia" were with Rostov and
Tver regions. In fact, everyone really liked the Sotalia, it is quite economical and, most importantly, built under very strict price parameters of the vessel. I hope that in the near future it will be widely presented to the Russian consumer. But first we will complete all our tests, conduct pilot operation and then we will be able to say with confidence when, in what volumes, in which regions it will be possible to see the "Sotalia". Taking into account the fact that its construction period is very short — with well—established documentation and supplies, it takes no more than four months - I think that by the end of next year we will be able to present several more "Sotali" in different regions.
— By the end of 2022, how many civil courts do you plan to hand over?— I think that we will traditionally be at the level of previous years.
More precise figures will be clear after we analyze the possibility of completing commissioning work on a number of civilian vessels. Because because of the sanctions, we lost the opportunity to finish work on imported equipment that has already been delivered to ships and vessels. We have learned to do a lot ourselves, found specialists. But, of course, it took longer. In general, we are on schedule.
— USC has excellent competencies in the field of shipbuilding. If we talk about passenger ships, are there any foreign customers from friendly countries who want to purchase Russian vessels?— Yes, of course.
We are conducting such negotiations with at least five or six countries. Including the possibility of organizing production both abroad and in cooperation. And for us, this will be one of the growth factors in order to quickly increase production. Of course, we will try to build cooperative ties with those who are ready to work with us as much as possible.
— Turning to cargo transport, you talked about the construction of a container ship. Are there any customers already?— You know, we have a very big interest in these container ships.
At least, I have negotiated with at least four customers on this topic. They are especially interested in them in the Caspian basin. There are those who are already ready to vote with money. But there are also those who are actively looking at this project. After all, word of mouth works very effectively in marketing. I think we will sign the first firm contract within a couple of months.
— We cannot ignore the topic of unprofitable contracts. At the last meeting, the President raised the issue of changing the cost of building ships during their production. It turns out that the corporation has several unprofitable projects? — Let's clarify right away that our contracts are unprofitable only for lead vessels — those that are being built for the first time or are unique.
In my memory, USC as a management company did not agree on any contract with losses at the time of its signing. We are not a charitable organization and we do not allow ourselves or our legal entities or shipyards to work at a loss. Such contracts become unprofitable, first of all, because when we sign them, we do not have a complete picture of what a ship or a ship will consist of. And it is possible to determine how much its construction will cost only approximately.
In this regard, the proposal of the Ministry of Industry and Trade regarding the examination of the contract price will greatly help everyone. Customers often operate with prices that, for example, were formed by us two to five years ago and do not take into account the current deflator indices. In addition, it is necessary to revise some state regulations in order to allow or enable adjustments to prices during the construction of the lead vessel. In particular, 44-FZ does not imply such a type of price as an approximate one for complex unique objects. Therefore, the topic of unprofitability is multifaceted. And it is exactly half dependent on government regulation.
The most important thing is what the president said. So that we have every penny on the account. We have created control rules for shipyards, centralized accounting, and have our own apparatus inside the financial service that controls pricing and tracks the dynamics of construction costs. A full-fledged financial control program is working. I would like to note that it was in the format of proactive control that we discovered these "holes".
— Then how to deal with this problem? — There are four proposals that will allow us to completely avoid this problem.
The first is the examination of prices for civil orders. We have been working with the Ministry on this initiative for a long time, now it is in parliament.
The second is the restructuring of the contracting process by government customers. First, a full-fledged technical project will be carried out, key suppliers will be selected, after which the project must pass an examination. And only then, at the second stage, competitive bidding for construction should take place — with the project already completed and worked out in volumes, quantities and deadlines.
The third is probably the most important thing. We need to recognize that the construction of head orders involves a lot of uncertainties and the amendments are an objective situation not only in Russia, but also abroad. For these purposes, it is necessary to apply a special coefficient, for example, 1.3 when forming the price of head orders compared to serial ones.
Fourth. Some of the shipyards in the areas equated to the Far North cannot objectively compete with the shipyards of the north-West. Targeted support of the Far Eastern shipyards will make it possible to level the economic conditions in this special region in comparison with other shipyards. This will eliminate some of the possible losses. For example, at the Amur Shipyard, the volume of additional social guarantees under federal law exceeds similar costs of shipyards in the north-west by almost 1 billion rubles per year.
And in conclusion, I would like to note once again that the problem of unprofitable orders concerns only the lead vessels, since, as a rule, we no longer have such unknowns during the construction of serial vessels.
