Representatives of the city Administration and the Governor of Saint Petersburg V.I.Matviyenko attended the formal ceremony. All in all, 200 guests participated in the works presentation, representing major companies from Russia and abroad, as well as the media.

The presentation program included a grand rally, a tour of the factory, a press-conference for the guests and journalists, demonstration of the vehicle in the course of the preliminaries of All-Russia rally raids Championship.

Congratulating the motor-car builders with the successful start, V.I.Matviyenko said: “The launching of new production facilities in our city has become a sign of the recent time. Inauguration of the new motor works represents continuation of our policy of supporting the national producer. One can only rejoice that more and more goods bearing the mark “Made in Saint Petersburg” show on the market”.

 

On screwing on the last nut on the license plate of the new YAROVIT truck rolling out the factory gate, Mme Matviyenko remarked: “At last we see a factory in Russia where a truck can be assembled while wearing white overalls. This signifies a modern approach to setting up new sophisticated production facilities with a view to create favorable conditions for the employees’ work”.

The President of the YAROVIT Group of Companies gave several interviews to the mass media where he stressed that “this is a very important, for the Group, project. In 2005 we plan to manufacture 250 YAROVIT trucks. By the year2009we shall be putting out 1.8 thousand vehicles per annum. Within the next few years we count on taking over up to 10 percent of Russia’s market in this vehicle class”.

In the course of the tour following the inauguration ceremony, A.V.Samolazov Director General of CJSC “IC “YAROVIT Motors” explained the technology of assembling parts and aggregates and the vehicle as a whole.

The production base of CJSC “YAROVIT Motors” dates back to mid-2003 when a production shop (built in 1964) was purchased from Leningrad Metal Works. A lot of funds and time had to be put into creating a multifunctional production platform of the future enterprise. The company performed large-scale construction and finishing work to completely reconstruct the building, finish and stock it. To date, work sections are fully ready for the production: the machining shop, the frame assembling, the cab assembling, the engines and axles sub-assembling, the general vehicle assembling, the checkup and debugging section. There is also a section for painting preparation and a painting-and-drying chamber. The factory has a modern warehouse facility with racks.

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 concept of production of the trucks is based on the principle of two-level cooperation with other producers: cooperation at the level of aggregates and assemblies, and cooperation at the level of parts for aggregates and assemblies of the company’s own design. Therefore, a truck assembly shop and a machine shop for mechanical processing of parts of the frame, suspension and cab skeleton make the key components of the main production facility.

The optimal variants of the aggregates setup, the clever harmonization of their performance characteristics, the wise compromise between the vehicle quality and its consumer value, have imparted YAROVIT trucks with a number of competitive advantages: high effectiveness; quality and reliability, rational prices that are lower than those of foreign-made vehicles in the same class.

The second day of the presentation was dedicated to negotiations. In the course of the talks contracts were signed for delivery of the new trucks, as well as letters of intent on cooperation with YAROVIT Motors company.

 

 

In the second half of the day on 18 February a demonstration was organized of one YAROVIT truck in the course of the preliminaries of the 1^st stage of All-Russia Rally Raids Championship, which evoked enormous interest of the general public.