ODK-Saturn has found a legally non-trivial way to obtain parts for repairing SaM146 engines installed on SSJ-100 aircraft. The spare parts belong to the French company PowerJet S.A., which left Russia. For the 14th time, ODK-Saturn appeals to the court with a request to allow the use of spare parts on which interim measures have been imposed by the court.
14 lawsuits with a guarantee
PowerJet S. CompanyA, headquartered in Paris, was created to produce SaM146 engines powered by Superjets. After the departure of PowerJet S.A. from Russia, UEC-Saturn calculated that the total amount of unfulfilled obligations by a foreign partner amounted to 152 million dollars.
In September 2022, UEC-Saturn appealed to the court with a demand to PowerJet S.A. to return the money and continue to fulfill its obligations. The case is still being considered. In October 2022, interim measures were imposed on the movable property of the French company, they consisted in the fact that all sets of parts were transferred to ODK-Saturn.
Now ODK-Saturn is applying to the court with petitions for the use of a part of the PowerJet S.A. property transferred to it for storage.
On June 28, 2024, the Arbitration Court of the Yaroslavl Region allowed ODK-Saturn to use 305 items of parts belonging to PowerJet S.A. for the repair of aircraft engines for a total amount of 137.9 million rubles.
To compensate for possible losses of PowerJet S.A., UEC-Saturn provides the French company with a bank guarantee from the United Engine Corporation, under which UEC undertakes to pay any amount not exceeding 6 billion rubles if UEC-Saturn does not reimburse PowerJet S.A. for losses.
Since December 2022, this is the fourteenth case when ODK-Saturn has seized parts for the repair of SSJ-100 aircraft through the court.
So, on March 4, 2024, the Arbitration Court of the Yaroslavl region issued a ruling on the adoption of interim measures in the form of the use of spare parts and consumables for 207 million rubles. On April 11, 2024, according to the same scheme, the use of 247 names of parts for a total of 171 million rubles was allowed . The most expensive position then turned out to be the internal support of the nozzle unit of a turbofan engine worth 26 million rubles.
In total, since December 2022, ODK-Saturn has received parts worth at least 1.73 billion rubles.
To each application to the court, ODK-Saturn attaches statements from airlines whose fleet contains aircraft in need of repair, these are Azimut, Yakutia, Yamal, IrAvia, GazpromAvia Aviation Enterprise.
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- PowerJet S.A was founded in 2004 by the French company Safran Aircraft Engine and the Russian company ODK-Saturn specifically for the production of SaM146 engines for the SSJ100. Despite the fact that this is a joint project, the company is considered French, and its headquarters are located in Paris.
- The SaM146 engine was certified in 2010, at the same time its mass production began. In France, they produced a gas generator, combustion chambers, high-pressure turbines, an engine control system, and drives. A fan and low-pressure turbines were manufactured in Rybinsk, assembly and testing were carried out.
Legal conflicts
"According to article 892 of the Civil Code, it is prohibited to use a thing transferred for storage. ODK-Saturn has taken over the storage of movable property of PowerJet S.A. in Russia. Turning to the courts over and over again, ODK-Saturn asks for permission to use the property. And to compensate for possible losses for PowerJet S.A., it provides counter-collateral in the form of a bank guarantee in an amount equal to the value of the claimed batch," Marina Vedmuk, head of the legal department of the military-industrial holding Kingisepp Machine-Building Plant (KMZ), said in an interview with Mashnews.
The expert noted that in this case, we are actually talking about the forced sale of property by the party carrying out the storage.
"It should be noted that the courts strictly comply with the requirements of the procedural law on the existence of a link between the subject of the proceedings and the interim measures taken, as a prerequisite for taking such measures. The procedural law itself does not limit the list of interim measures," the expert stressed.
In the case of ODK-Saturn, the interim measure consists in the fact that the parts transferred to storage are used to fulfill obligations that the defendant company had previously fulfilled.
In theory, the parties could initially conclude a responsible storage agreement with the right of use, and then all disagreements would be resolved, the expert said.
Nevertheless, despite the fact that PowerJet S.A. does not lose anything financially, the company itself tries to appeal the interim measures every time. However, to no avail.
So, on May 30, the Arbitration Court of the Yaroslavl region refused the French company to cancel the interim measures.
Why in parts?
The expert stressed that the interim measures imposed on the PowerJet property are by no means responsible storage, the requirements for which are clearly spelled out in regulations and which are widely used in judicial practice.
The question arises, why did ODK-Saturn need to initiate new applications to the court 14 times, why not immediately receive all the details within the framework of interim measures.
Experts' opinions on this matter are divided.
So, Marina Vedmuk suggested that the key issue here is a bank guarantee - ODK-Saturn is most likely not ready to provide a one-time counter-performance in a bank guarantee for the entire cost of the batch. After all, a bank guarantee, in turn, costs money. And so ODK-Saturn operates in stages.
"The interim measures that the applicant requests the arbitration court to take are forced and must be documented and proportionate. The purpose of the interim measures is to maintain a balance of interests of the parties, including preventing the plaintiff from causing even more damage before the date of the court's decision, while at the same time not putting the plaintiff in a privileged position relative to the defendant," Andrei Misarov suggested. He believes that the chances of justifying to the court the need to take interim measures only on the basis of assumptions that some part of the details may fail in the future are very small for the applicant.
When the details run out
The Russian production of parts for SaM146 engines is developing, but the process is not fast. So, in December 2023, the UEC reported that the corporation managed to replace spark plugs at the Ufa Aggregate Production Association, which were previously produced by Safran Aircraft Engines.
Last year, a prototype of the import-substituted Superjet-100 was released. It has replaced 40 systems and units. But the Ministry of Industry and Trade in its release immediately stressed that the engine in the aircraft is still the same - the French-Russian SaM146. The fully import-substituted Superjet New should be equipped with a domestic PD-8 engine. The aircraft model with the PD-8 engine has already been tested, the next stage will be to test the domestic engine on a prototype aircraft.
Alexey Rabin, director of the Center for Coordination of Scientific Research at GUAP, member of the expert council of the ANO NTI Platform, stressed in an interview with Mashnews that the production of the Superjet New with maximum import substitution does not mean that the parts used for the new model are identical to foreign ones. Therefore, even if the production of replaced parts is established, manufacturers cannot easily switch to the production of parts for the SSJ-100 model.
Experts do not know the answer to the question: how long will the parts stored at UEC-Saturn last? The company has not yet responded to Mashnees' request. PowerJet S.A. also refrained from commenting.
