Deputy Director for Production Igor Vasilievich Zagorulko tells about the history of the Shakhtinskaya Ceramics plant, which has become a personal story.
How pots are fired
You have been working at the plant for 37 years. Let’s not ask what Zagorulko became for the plant, let’s ask what the plant became for Zagorulko .
What did the plant become for me? This is no longer a place, even a favorite one, where you just come to work. This is a second home. And my soul became attached to him no less than to the first one.
So no less?
Well, if less, then not by much.
Remember your first day at the factory?
Certainly.
What do you remember, if it’s not a secret?
Just don't laugh. I always wanted to know how to make clay jugs of various shapes, sizes, and reliefs. And not handicraft, with my own hands on a potter’s wheel, I had some idea about this, but on an industrial scale. And the first thing I did was ask for a tour with the head of the social and cultural services department. It was there that they produced both utilitarian and souvenir products from majolica: jugs, mugs, teapots, canakhs and much, much more.
An accident that became destiny
Did you come to the plant as an engineer?
No, I accepted the position of chief mechanic. And before that, he worked for six years at the Polytechnic Institute: he started as an assistant in the department, and reached the position of deputy dean. So I had some experience in management work.
How did it happen that you decided to quit science?
The longer I worked, the more clearly I understood that this was not for me. Practice is closer to me. This is my character, nothing can be done. As far as I can remember, I have always had a passion for mechanics: I was always tinkering with some instruments and mechanisms, collecting something. He even made his own scooters and bicycles.
And choosing a profession was not difficult?
There wasn’t even a question about where to go. Neither my parents nor my parents, despite the fact that both of them are doctors.
Let's go back to your arrival at the plant?
Why exactly “Shakhty Ceramics”, it was then called “Shakhty Faience”? Honestly? By chance. I, of course, knew that such a plant existed. But my wife, she worked in a design office and was well acquainted with the party organizer of the plant. And in the conversation word for word came: “My husband no longer wants to work at the institute.” - “And we have a vacancy.”
As always, based on party connections...
No, based on the results of an interview with the director, chief engineer. By the way, the director, Georgy Petrovich Pavlov, was also a new person at the plant at that time, appointed half a year before me...
Were you afraid to go into production after pure theory?
I didn’t have much practical experience at that time - four months as a workshop mechanic in practice... But no, I wasn’t afraid. And everything, as you see, worked out. And chance became fate.
Put? Dismantle!
What was it like, the plant, thirty-seven years ago?
There was one working workshop that produced washbasins, 160 thousand units per year. A small line for the production of facing tiles, producing 250 thousand square meters per year. And the area for the production of cultural products that I spoke about. There was a machine shop, a construction shop and a laboratory, which still exists, in the area of the garage. The second workshop has just been built and put into operation. Pavlov came just for its launch. He signed the act of putting it into operation, and almost immediately began reconstruction.
It sounds a little strange, but let’s ask differently: is the reconstruction of the newly introduced workshop a necessity or an administrative whim?
The bitter truth of life. At the plant, by order of the Ministry, a tile production line was installed, and the same Ministry signed an order to eliminate all such lines as imperfect and ineffective.
And what in return?
By that time, our parent research institute of All-Union significance, NIIStroykeramika, had developed completely new kilns and production lines with a capacity of 700 thousand - 1 million square meters of tiles per year. So the reconstruction consisted of installing two such lines. By the way, I want to note that the equipment was not serial, it was made on special order at the mechanical repair enterprises of the Ministry of Construction Materials Industry. This was a new technology compared to what existed before. We immediately started using non-shrinking masses; only two factories in the USSR used them, ours and Volgograd.
It was impossible to put it right away!
Have you heard the saying: where common sense ends, bureaucracy begins? To be fair, in addition to the lines, the ceramics workshop underwent serious alterations. We completely changed the technology, introduced modern, at that time, stands for the production of sanitary and construction products, created flow-conveyor lines in the area of cultural products, and automated many processes.
Shoemaker without shoes
But I’m wondering: the factories were working, tiles were being produced, but it was impossible for a mere mortal to buy them.
Yes, our products were in short supply. Moreover, regardless of the quality, all of it was sold to consumers. And it was really impossible to buy it in a store. Even for me, the chief engineer of the plant, this was quite problematic.
Why?
You see, then, as now, the main indicator of the enterprise’s performance was sales of products. But unlike today, in those days all products were signed in advance for consumers by order of the ministry, down to the last meter. Mainly by construction organizations and departments. So a simple chief engineer or worker could purchase it only if one of the above-appointed owners allowed it.
They didn't think about retail in those years.
Occasionally and in small quantities something appeared. Mainly in Moscow. And in most cases made in Czechoslovakia.
And ours painted the walls with water-based emulsion.
Take it high, at that time it was also just coming into circulation. Would you like dark blue or dark green oil paint?
And yet I don't understand.
Well, okay, construction sites, schools, hospitals... But you can also go to shops? Or not? There were many construction sites, few factories producing tiles, and the lines were low-power. A dozen or one and a half factories throughout the Soviet Union produced 40-50 million square meters of tiles per year. As much as our Group of Companies does! There were no floor tiles as such, one was Metlakh tiles in the 100x100 format, other sizes were just beginning to appear.
Recent history
And then the 90s came and it became completely “good”.
It was very difficult in the 90s. Although production was running, it did not stop for a single day. But there was a very high salary arrears, reaching up to 6 months. In 1996, it was necessary to stop and mothball the workshop for the production of sanitary and construction products and social and cultural products. Since then, this direction has no longer existed at the plant.
And what's the reason?
Basically, lack of demand for products. Try buying a porcelain mug in the Soviet years! And in the 90s, the market was flooded with Western products. Not always the best in quality, but often cheaper.
And when did the new history of the plant begin?
In 1998. By the way, then the first workshop was reopened, but for the production of tiles. True, we completely redid it. The old equipment was dismantled, some was sold to subcontractors, and some was sold for scrap. We built two lines, and designed, installed and launched them entirely on our own. Contractors were hired only for gas supply systems. At the same time, we began to slowly purchase imported equipment: presses, glazing lines.
But the main production unit was still the unchanged second workshop?
You got excited about immutability. We also reconstructed it: we removed the Soviet lines and installed two tiles per one and a half million square meters each. We also bought an Italian line with a capacity of 3 million square meters, and built a separate extension to the workshop for it.
By the way, what happened to the third workshop at that time?
There was a wasteland.
That is?
The plant ended immediately behind the hangars that stand behind the second workshop. We purchased this vacant lot in the early 2000s - we decided to go for porcelain tiles. We started with the construction of a warehouse for finished products. Paved 3.5 km. railway tracks, essentially created a new station. At the same time, a warehouse for raw materials and a workshop building were erected. And on December 31, 2005, having laid the last sandwich panel, the circuit was closed and heat was supplied so that interior work could be done on holidays. In the spring, line No. 6 was installed and put into operation, and in 2006, a porcelain stoneware production workshop began operating.
In our conversation we somehow bypassed the quarry and the brick quarry.
Until 1981, the quarry was a deposit that belonged to Rostovrud, which was also part of our ministry. Moreover, Rostovrud worked mainly with crushed stone and sand; clay, as they say, was forced on him. Accordingly, they were not interested in working with clays, the quality of the raw materials was disgusting, we constantly complained to the Ministry. And one fine day the minister, who was tired of the situation worse than a bitter radish, said: take the quarry for yourself.
Lucky.
In principle, yes, but at the beginning there were difficulties. Firstly, I had to master a fundamentally new direction, learn mining. Secondly, the quarry at that time had almost exhausted itself. Thirdly, we received a pit, destroyed equipment and a dilapidated barn in which the engineers were huddled: there was no repair base, there was nothing, we had to create it ourselves. But when we began to develop the Vladimirovskoye field, which was built in 1992, this experience came in handy.
The quarry is more or less clear, but what about the brick one?
The decision to build a plant was bold, but quite logical and natural. Some of the clay extracted from the quarry was not in demand in the main production; we sold it to brickmakers. That is, there are raw materials, there is a market for finished products, so why not open production?
It's so easy and relaxed!
It's not easy at all. Let's start with the fact that we had to look for a long time for a place so that there was gas, electricity, water nearby, and even a sanitary-ecological zone was observed. Unfortunately, there was no such place on the Shakhty land area. But the administration of the Oktyabrsky district showed a very great interest in the emergence of industrial production. She very quickly transferred the selected area from agricultural land to industrial land. However, there was a problem with electricity...
Wasn't he around?
It was there, but energy supply organizations demanded huge amounts of money for connecting to the networks. Despite the fact that there was plenty of free capacity. At least due to the closed neighboring mine.
That's why they are monopolists.
For every monopolist you can find a government! When we built workshop 2, we installed substation 110 and equipped it with the most modern requirements and the most modern imported equipment. And it turned out that it was cheaper for us to lay out 12 kilometers of line than to pay for the connection.
Was Markinsky the last construction impulse?
Not so. Immediately after the plant, we began to build a workshop for the construction of third-firing products: decors, borders. Just opposite us, the former automobile repair plant of the Rostovugol plant was for sale.
And then the 2008 crisis came, and what happened happened.
Thank God, everything was resolved successfully. But we have repeatedly been convinced that the development strategy was chosen correctly.
This may be a bit of an indiscreet question.
You have been at the plant for 37 years, several directors have changed. The position of chief engineer seems to have always been the last step on the path to the director’s chair. When Pavlov retired, the city committee asked me to become his successor. But I'm a technician, not an administrator. At one time I decided this for myself once and for all and I don’t regret it at all. I never understood my friends, who at any moment were ready to move to any position, as long as they got a promotion. It ended, most often, sadly.