Yantar JSC is a shipyard in Kaliningrad located in an ice-free harbor. The basis of its activities is the construction, maintenance and repair of warships. Orders are also being fulfilled for the manufacture of research, transport, rescue vessels, ferries, fishing trawlers, highly saturated hulls for third-party customers. It is part of the Western Machine-Building Center subholding.
History reference
The Yantar Kaliningrad Plant traces its history to the Prussian company Union Gizerai, founded in 1826. The company in those years carried out a wide range of metal assembly and metalworking operations. Here ships, bridges, metal structures, steam locomotives, cranes, brewing equipment and others were made.
After centuries of successful work, the company went bankrupt due to the global economic crisis in 1929. Production facilities were bought by the German company Schihau and set up assembly of warships.
After the capture of Koenigsberg by the Soviet troops, the factory organized the plant number 820, later renamed the Yantar plant. Kaliningrad thus became a major shipbuilding center in the Baltic.
Description
Today, the plant has a fairly stable position. Contracts with the Russian Navy involve the assembly of 8 warships (6 frigates and 2 BDKs), which allowed loading capacities for several years to come. The project for the construction and equipping of the unique oceanographic research vessel Yantar was successfully completed.
The company employs 1,200 executive workers, in general, the team employs about 3,000 people (not counting contractors). The vacancies of the Yantar plant (Kaliningrad) are filled at the expense of graduates of the Kaliningrad Technical University and the Baltic Shipbuilding College.
The production area is huge - 83 hectares. Only the outfit embankment extends for 1.46 km. The water channel of the shipping channel with a depth of 8 m makes it possible to launch boats with a length of up to 200 m and a width of 35 m from the territory of the enterprise into the open sea. The Kaliningrad Yantar plant is equipped with two large slipway systems, which make it possible to assemble ships with a displacement of 12,000 tons.
Production
The process chain for the manufacture of cases begins with the production of metal structures and consists of the following steps:
- metal pretreatment;
- manufacturing parts, blanks;
- subsequent assembly and welding.
The material from which the ship’s hull is built comes and is laid out in an open warehouse of the rolling section, then it goes to the production line of a sheet shot blast machine, is cleaned and primed.
Then, the metal ready for processing, as necessary, goes either to the gas cutting line or to a closed warehouse. At the gas cutting unit, parts are made from it and sent either to the picking area or to bend (depending on the design of the vessel). Some parts are manufactured at the cold sheet metal processing complex, while others are manufactured at the cold processing section of profile metal. All parts eventually end up in the picking area, where they are sorted, laid out in sections and sent for assembly. It is carried out by teams of installers in the section welding section and in the assembly area for foundations and small metal structures.
Modernization
The technical re-equipment program being implemented at the Yantar plant in Kaliningrad made it possible to replenish the company's easel fleet. First of all, equipment was purchased for machine-building and pipe-bending industries. In workshop 41, 97 units of new machinery and equipment were commissioned. The machine-building production fleet was replenished with 22 machines.
KamAZ trucks with a carrying capacity of 5 and 15 tons, a KamAZ dump truck with a carrying capacity of 15 tons, a KamAZ truck crane with a carrying capacity of 25 tons, excavators, and municipal vehicles were purchased. An Italian ship trailer for transporting sections also appeared in the arsenal of the plant.
Warships
In recent years, the Yantar plant in Kaliningrad has been fulfilling orders for the construction of six Project 11356 watchdogs and two BDK (Large Landing Ships) n. 11711 for the Russian Navy. From 2006 to 2013, patrol ships n. 11356 were collected for Indian colleagues.
The pride of the plant is SKR “Undaunted”. On March 25, 1987, construction of the project series 11540 began on Kaliningrad slipways. Over the years of service, the Undaunted was repeatedly recognized as the best ship on the Baltic Fleet. Since 2008, his team has repeatedly fought with Somali pirates. In 2010 and 2015 the enterprise carried out overhaul of the fighting ship. The company's specialists replaced the afterburner engines, auxiliary diesel generators, repaired all the main systems of the Undaunted: electric, fire-fighting, drainage, fuel, control systems and automation. Also upgraded weapons.
Civil shipbuilding
This is one of the promising areas of the enterprise. Today, the plant has the opportunity to get a completely new project into the construction of ferries. The expert council of water transport approved an ice-breaker automobile / railway / passenger ferry of an unlimited navigation area for the Vanino-Kholmsk route. This is a project of CNF11CPD Marine Engineering Bureau.
By the way, the plant already has experience in the construction of such ferries. For almost twenty years, starting in 1973, the company built ten ferries of the Sakhalin type just to open the Vanino-Kholmsk line. Three of them still carry goods and passengers.