Sources in the shipbuilding industry and those familiar with the situation told RBC that JSC Marine Instrument Engineering Corporation (KMP) will fully become part of the United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC, managed by VTB Bank). According to the interlocutors of the publication, in July, the head of the USC, Andrei Puchkov, already held a meeting in St. Petersburg with the heads of KMP enterprises on the topic of integration.
Against the background of the transfer to USC, personnel changes will also take place in the corporation: the position of the general director of the KMP will be taken by his deputy for production, Andrei Vernigora, who in the past also headed the department for ensuring the state defense order of the Ministry of Defense, instead of Leonid Strugov.
Marine Instrument Engineering Corporation
VTB redirected the request to USC. The Ministry of Industry and Trade and the corporation itself declined to comment. The ILC did not respond to RBC's request at the time of publication.
RBC sources in the shipbuilding industry cite two reasons for integration – economic and technological.
"Against the background of steadily unprofitable shipbuilding, instrument makers, as first-level contractors with the ability to monopolistically supply products to shipyards, show profits every year. Their financial performance is also supported by a large amount of military-technical cooperation with foreign countries," says a former top manager of one of the shipyards. He believes that the integration of the KMP will partially improve the performance of the USC, which its management needs in the context of the task of its financial recovery.
Another source believes that integration is necessary to maintain the competitiveness of Russian ships and vessels in the near future.
"The development of control systems, electric propulsion, and software will determine the competitiveness of ships and vessels with foreign analogues," the source says. In his opinion, as long as KMP remains a separate legal entity, it is enough for it as a monopolist to supply existing solutions to customers. After integration into the USC, shipbuilders will be able to influence the parameters of the resulting systems.
USC will also be able to influence pricing policy – to reduce the costs of shipyards for the purchase of systems and devices, reducing the margin of concerns in a directive manner.
"The most obvious and primitive solution is to reduce the marginality of a particular concern from 30% to 6% when delivering products," he notes.
A source from the former USC management team, who worked at the corporation before it was transferred to VTB Bank, says that the former management asked the Ministry of Industry and Trade three times to include KMP in the USC perimeter, but was refused.
JSC Marine Instrument Engineering Corporation was established on April 1, 2020 by decree of President Vladimir Putin. At the time of the creation of the KMP, the enterprises included in it generated revenue of more than 50 billion rubles. It includes the Okeanpribor and Morinformsystem Agat concerns owned by the Federal Property Management Agency, as well as the Central Research Institute Electropribor and the NGO Aurora.
Enterprises develop and manufacture navigation and communication systems, combat information and control systems, radar and sonar devices for warships and civilian vessels. At that time, the Ministry of Industry and Trade noted that it would be possible to talk about the feasibility of integration into USC or Rostec in 5-10 years, after analyzing the work of the corporation and the effectiveness of completing tasks.
At the beginning of 2024, the Ministry of Industry and Trade instructed the general director of KMP Leonid Strugov to provide representatives of USC and Rostec with the technical opportunity and jobs for them to conduct an audit, as stated in a letter from Viktor Yevtukhov (then State Secretary - Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade). RBC sources said that according to the results of the audit, KMP enterprises can be distributed between USC and Rostec.
