The Nadezhda (Serov) Metallurgical Plant has been manufacturing metal products and billets for over 120 years. Founded for rail production, over the years it has grown into a large plant with a wide range of products. After entering the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company, the company gained a second wind, large-scale modernization made it possible to switch from open-hearth coal furnaces to electric steel-smelting equipment.
The plant to be!
In the 90s of the XIX century, the tsarist government worked out the question of laying the Siberian Railway, designed to unite Central Russia and the Far East. Representatives of the noble family Polovtsovs, who had a great influence in the Theological District of the Middle Urals, decided to take advantage of this.
At the suggestion of Auerbach, a mining engineer, they agreed to build a metallurgical factory in the region for the production of rails, but with the condition of guaranteed sales of products to the state. Negotiations lasted about a year. The Siberian Road Administration has committed to purchase 5 million pounds of rails. A deposit of 2.5 million rubles made it possible to rebuild the Serov Metallurgical Plant for state money.
Base
Finally, in 1893, excavation work began on laying the foundations of future buildings. For construction, they chose a site surrounded by forests near the Kakva River, 3.5 versts from the Bogoslovsk-Sosvenskaya railway. At the same time, a large number of housing and household buildings were being erected. Towards the end of the winter of 1894, a whole town grew up in the middle of the taiga, later called Serov.
The enterprise was designed by a whole group of outstanding engineers of its time: A. A. Auerbach was responsible for the general concept of structures, F. F. Stark calculated metal structures, A. V. Nikitin (manager of the Sosvinsky plant) and R. R. Tonkov designed blast furnaces, an open-hearth furnace the site and the rolling mill were developed by A.I. Meshchersky.
The ceremony of laying the new production took place on May 29, 1894, the first pound of metal was smelted on January 19, 1896, and the first production - rails - was received on March 3 of the same year. Actually, from this moment begins the history of the Serov Metallurgical Plant. By the way, the enterprise was named after the wife of the state adviser A. A. Polovtsov - Nadezhda Mikhailovna.
Pre-revolutionary development
The Polovtsovs embarked on a large-scale arrangement of a new enterprise. At the time of construction, it was the most advanced and productive in the Urals. The equipment was purchased from European suppliers from Belgium, France, Germany. Already in the autumn of 1896, the first part of the contract for the supply of 500,000 pounds of rails was completed.
In addition to the rail section, workshops for the production of high-quality and roofing iron, refractory products and shell blanks worked. High-quality ore (with an iron content of up to 60% and the presence of manganese, which improved the properties of metals) was sourced from a nearby mine, called Auerbakhovsky. Later, the development of other mines began - all of them were connected with a narrow gauge railway with the Serov Metallurgical Plant.
Growth difficulties
After 4 years of operation, the company began to experience financial difficulties. By this time, the village of Serov totaled about 10,000 inhabitants, more than 2100 people worked at the production site. Salary arrears caused a sharp discontent of workers, by 1905 a revolutionary circle had formed, a wave of strikes had swept.
However, the work of the plant continued. In 1906, powerful 350-mm and 450-mm mills were installed in the new section rolling shop. The rolling of the stoop and varietal iron began. By 1911, at the Serov Metallurgical Plant, there were 6 open-hearth and 7 blast furnaces. The number of employees increased to 4000. Up to 70% of the total volume of all Ural enterprises produced rails here alone.
The beginning of World War I was confused by production plans. Instead of rails, barbed wire, shells, and blanks for guns were made. The evacuated equipment of the Riga Mechanical Plant allowed to increase production capacities. The construction of its own power plant for 7500 kW promised promising prospects, but the impending turmoil determined the further development of the enterprise.
In the name of revolution
On December 7, 1917, the new government nationalized production. In the autumn of 1919, the restoration of workshops that had suffered in the civil war began. In 1930, the Serov Metallurgical Plant named after Serov was reoriented from the manufacture of rails and low-grade products to the smelting of high-quality and specialized steels. Local steelmakers were the first in the world to arrange rolling shoes for tractor tracks. The assortment has replenished:
- Billets of various sizes of square and round shapes obtained by rolling.
- Calibration rental, obtained by cold drawing, followed by turning and grinding.
- Hollow drilling steels.
- Ball-bearing steels.
By 1937, up to 70% of production was high-quality rolled metal (previously this figure barely reached 5%).
The 40s
In the prewar time, the plant continued to improve metallurgical technologies. In 1940-41, smelting of anticorrosion and natural alloyed steels with a vanadium concentration of 0.7% was mastered. The production of new types of cast iron has been established: cuprous and vanadium.
The Great Patriotic War became a catalyst for the introduction of new casting methods. Over 4 years, production increased 1.7 times, factory workers learned to smelting about 100 new grades of high-quality alloy steels, so necessary for the defense industry, energy, and engineering. Again, "for the first time in the world," the technology for smelting ferrochrome and ferrosilicon has been developed.
May peace be
After the war, the Serovskiy metallurgical plant was repeatedly modernized and increased its capacity. In 1946, an agglomeration factory was built, a second belt of an iron casting machine was installed. In 1960, a step-down substation was introduced, which connected the enterprise with the Unified Energy System of the USSR.
Since 1975, the plant has been supplying special alloys and steels to domestic automobile and aviation enterprises for the production of cars and trucks, military self-propelled equipment, and aircraft. The main consumers were the Ministry of Aviation and the Volga Automobile Plant. Also this year, metallurgists urgently launched the production of hollow steels for oil and gas equipment previously purchased abroad.
In the 80s, much attention was paid to the so-called diversification of production. The Soviet government instructed factory workers to produce scarce consumer goods, which did not quite match the profile of the plant. More useful for the enterprise was the commissioning of a scrap metal processing facility in 1985.
In the early 90s, the plant was corporatized. In 2000, it came under the control of UMMC Holding, which made it possible to raise funds for a large-scale reconstruction. A revolutionary event was the commissioning of an 80-ton electric steel-smelting complex, which made it possible to abandon environmentally harmful and technologically obsolete open-hearth furnaces.
Serov Metallurgical Plant: products
Today, the company continues to produce a wide range of products. Consumers are offered 320 types of steel, more than 400 types of rolled products. The main areas are the release of:
- Alloy steels.
- Pig iron.
- Hire (with special finishing, calibrated, high-quality).
- Billets of pipe, square, axial.
- Bloom.
- Iron sulfate.
In 2016, at the initiative of the administration, the Serov Metallurgical Plant was renamed Nadezhdinsky with the wording: “In order to observe historical justice.”