Berezichsky glass factory, according to the forecasts of its general director, will be launched again in April

18.01.2022

Silence in glass production came on the eve of the New Year. The forced shutdown, according to Alexei Pisarev, occurred due to overcrowded warehouses of finished products. “First, one car out of three was stopped, then another, but all the same, the warehouses were stocked. Therefore, there was only one way out - to stop production for a short respite, ”says the general director of the plant.

At the time of the shutdown of production, 130 million units of products worth about 300 million rubles had accumulated in the warehouses of the plant.

“There was a surplus, the reason for which was the subsidence of the sales market,” explains Alexey Alekseevich. - However, the process of marketing products, albeit slowly, but goes on. 40 million sold already. Therefore, we hope that in April we will launch again.”

They plan to launch a unique glass production without losing valuable personnel: all 240 workers and specialists were sent on forced leave with a monthly cash allowance, which is two-thirds of the average wage.

But the most important thing, according to Alexei Alekseevich, is that by April the sales market should start to work more actively. Currently, the main consumers of glass factory products are pharmaceutical factories in Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus.

“We produced a lot of products for packaging various tinctures. But all this was slowly curtailed, and now in pharmacies in glass you will not find either iodine or greenery. All this is now in the form of pencils. Not to find motherwort with chamomile. I understand that earlier the consumers of these medicines were people whose years of activity fell on Soviet times. And the youth has never used it and never will. They do not need rubbing and herbs. Therefore, when I was at pharmaceutical factories and talked with directors, they said that if earlier licorice root syrup was bottled at 400-500 thousand units per month, now it’s only 30-40,” notes Alexey Pisarev.

However, the light at the end of the tunnel, albeit small, still dawned. The factory workers hope that orders for glass products will begin to come from Europe, where, due to the increase in gas prices, local glass production began to be curtailed. As, for example, it is now happening in the Czech Republic. “Therefore, we hope to expand the geography of product sales due to this factor,” emphasizes the general director of the plant.

When asked whether the owner of the plant has an idea to retrain and switch to the production of new products, Alexey Alekseevich answered that for now everything will work according to the old chain, producing the same range of glass containers.

However, among the workers there are those who are afraid of complete conservation or sale of the plant.

“We would not want a worse outcome, because the production is really unique, debugged over the years. Try now to build such furnaces or purchase similar equipment. We are attached to our work and do not want to lose it. Therefore, we hope that in April we will return to the plant as a whole,” the factory workers say.

From the editor. Archaeologists, who excavated ancient Kozelsk in the 21st century, found fragments of glass production in the cultural layer, we talked about this on the pages of the district. That is, for the Kozelsky district, the production of glass and glass containers is a matter of its entire history. The closure of the legendary plant, founded in 1912 by Prince Obolensky, would not only be a social catastrophe, but would also mean the end of an entire historical era. Perhaps this is the case when you need to do everything possible so that the era does not end.