“Saint Petersburg has acquired the status of a car-building city”, - said in her address the Governor of Saint Petersburg V.I.Matviyenko at the new “YAROVIT Motors” auto works inauguration which took place on February 17-18. The enterprise is Russia’s new manufacturer of multi-axle trucks.

 

The Gloros A4352D model truck which spectacularly “cut through” the movie screen on which a reel showing the history of the new factory was demonstrated indeed sent into raptures the numerous guests and representatives of the mass media present at the works inauguration.

 

YAROVIT trucks are positioned on Russia’s market as multiple-axle high-payload and cross country capacity vehicles featuring greater gross weights and axle loads than the hitherto produced vehicles designated for public roads. They are designed for trucking cargos in complicated road and climatic conditions. In terms of payload, the commodity niche of YAROVIT trucks is in between the highway trucks and the quarry dump trucks. The distinctive features of YAROVIT trucks, as compared to highway trucks, list their enhanced load-carrying capacity (payloads of over 25 tons), traction power and cross-country capacity. From quarry dump trucks, YAROVIT vehicles differ inasmuch as, from the point of view of dimensions and environmental protection norms, they meet the requirements of motor-vehicle operation on public roads, feature high speed characteristics and, besides, are more economical in operation.

 

The vehicle design envisages using units and aggregates corresponding to the world level, both of the company’s own production or made by the world’s leading manufacturers. The principle of two-level cooperation with other producers is widely used, i.e. cooperation at the level of the ready aggregates and units, and cooperation at the level of parts for aggregates and units of the company’s own design.

 

The home-designed aggregates and units include: the cab (the production facilities are organized in Belarus and Russia), the frame, the suspension, the driving axles, the transfer case, the centralized tire inflating system. As the customer may opt for, the vehicle can be built with units and aggregates of Western manufacture or those produced by ‘YAROVIT” Group of Companies.

 

The company’s own original design developments as well as strategic partnership with the national suppliers of components, units and aggregates (2 Russian factories and 20 enterprises in the republics of the former USSR) and the world’s leading manufacturers (Deutz, Cummins andCaterpillar engines of 335 to 598 hp; ZF mechanical and Allison automatic gearboxes; ABS-equipped Wabco and Knorr Bremse braking systems; electric equipment made by Hella, Siemens, Bosch and others) have enabled the company to attain a supreme level of quality, reliability and efficiency of the trucks.

 

The truck-manufacturing facility is organized on 10 thousand sq.m of production floor space purchased from Leningrad Metal Works. The project total cost stands at 40 million USD. Financing is provided by founders of the OJSC “YAROVIT Motors”, the investment companies Elgin System (USA) and Tracks & Dumpers (Great Britain). As A.M.Birukov, President of YAROVIT Group of Companies stated, the projected investment will be repaid within 3.5-4 years. He also noted that “we plan, during the next two years, to sell 10% of our products for ready cash, 40% will be for leasing for 3-5 years, and 50% of the vehicles will be rented out”. Answering a question by reporter of “The Expert” he said: “The trucks will be sold via the existing leasing companies. Preference will be given to those companies whose financial terms are the most advantageous for our consumers. To date, we cooperate closely with “Rosagroleasing”, “IR (Interros) Leasing”. We shall definitely work with European and world banks to assist our clients in obtaining loans at minimal interest rates. Our consumers are big companies that have their equipment running round the clock. Which is why it is clear that these clients will be interested in bigger deals than buying one or a few vehicles. At the same time with signing a truck sale contract we shall sign contracts providing for servicing the vehicles using the customer’s production and servicing facilities. Simultaneously, we shall start deploying a distribution network across the regions, which will concentrate warehouses for spare parts. During the first stage mobile service stations will be employed. We also plan to establish contacts with each consumer (even the individual driver) and thus respond to any truck breakage in real time. The slated production volume for the forthcoming three years makes it possible to resolve this task. When setting up a dealer network, we shall employ the existent maintenance centers and create our own ones or in partnerships”.

 

The truck assembling technology is organized on the freely moving conveyor principle, which essentially means that assembled parts move freely between assemblage workstations on bogies. The assembling sequence and pattern ensures asynchronous operations at workstations, thus enabling overlapping of two or more operations at the same workstation.

 

The stationary (building berth) assembly principle is also viable for small production volumes of up to 500 trucks annually (the method is used currently), providing that production sections are organized for subassembly of the main aggregates and units. All this makes it possible for YAROVIT trucks to attain a number of competitive advantages: high effectiveness, quality and reliability, and the rational price which is lower than prices of foreign-made vehicles in the same class (Terberg, GINAF, SISU).

 

The YAROVIT truck line is formed on the platforms of the basic wheel formula chassis: 6x6, 8x8, 10x8, using the “from complex to simple” principle. These chassis serve to build the GLOROS (cab-over-engine), DOGMUS (conventional “hooded engine”) and ORDEX (a cab-in-front-of-engine chassis used to mount special-purpose equipment or rigging) truck families, or to create different wheel formulae of variegated setups. Various special-purpose vehicles will be built on the basis of the chassis: the dump truck, the bolster truck, the logger, etc.

 

A.V.Samolazov, Director General of CJSC “IC “YAROVIT Motors” in his address noted that the production development plan prepared includes three stages: the first stage – organization of production facilities ensuring production of up to 500 vehicles per year (building-berth assembling method); the second stage – organization of conveyor assembly (freely moving conveyor) ensuring the output of up to 1200 vehicles per year, the third stage which stipulates for stepping up the production up to 1800 trucks per annum.

 

To date, the works has turned out 5 model Gloros A4352D dump trucks that are undergoing test runs and certification in various extreme climatic and mining work conditions: with the mining company OJSC “Norilsk Nickel”, at the quarry of the limited company “Phosphorite” Industrial Group Ltd. (Kingisepp, Leningrad Oblast) and in Turkmenistan. The co-speaker N.V.Goncharov, Director of the Mine (“Phosphorite” Industrial Group Ltd.) noted the supreme efficiency and performance characteristics of the dump truck Gloros A4352D and informed of his company’s intention to gradually substitute a large portion of their truck fleet with YAROVIT dump trucks.

 

The list of potential consumers of YAROVIT multi-axle trucks embraces 93 companies located in various geographic regions, active in fuel, forestry, petrochemical industries, as well as in metallurgy and construction. Currently, negotiations are underway to deliver 680 trucks, which means a full portfolio for the factory for the next two years. Testing the vehicles is planned in the extreme conditions of India, through participation in “Paris-Dakar” rallies and many other ways.

 

Further development of the project stipulates for setting up, on the territory of Russia, of aggregate assembling facilities in cooperation with leaders of the world auto making, with the purpose of lowing the vehicle production costs and saturating the market with high-quality aggregates.