Aerospace |
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Foundation
of NK Engines
At the press-briefing on 27 June engine-makers from Samara and Kazan publicly declared the registration of their long-awaited marriage. The merger, christened "NK Engines" ("Dvigately NK" in Russian), unites the following organizations: Motorostroitel, the Kazan Engine-Building Industrial Association, Kuznetsov's Scientific Industrial Complex of Samara, Metallist-Samara, Samara Machinery-building Design Bureau, AOZT NK Engines of Moscow, Aviamotor Design-Industrial Enterprise of Kazan, ELRoss holding company, Samara Turbine Power Stations and SKD-bank. The idea to unite numerous developers and manufacturers of engines located in the Volga region occurred on 1 October 1993, during a business trip of prime-minister Victor Chernomyrdin to Samara. The participants in the proposed union identified themselves on 19 August 1996, when their representatives signed a letter of intent on forming NK Engines. A long process of paper work finally ended on 20 March 1997, when the State Property Committee of the Russian Federation officially registered the merger as the finance-industrial group #40.
A. Pavlov, general director of the Kazan Engine-Building Industrial Association, added, "Foundation of the finance-industrial group was the demand of the market. Today's market requires high-quality products in sufficient quantities within a certain timeframe. Our finance-industrial group can meet this requirement."
Vicious Circle of Non-PaymentsIn part, the merger was formed to ease mutual payments and barter deals within the Russian industry. The last and probably most powerful argument for the engine-makers to merge was the acute financial crisis they had in 1995. That year the government found itself unable to provide sufficient funding for the Russian Space Agency (RSA) and Defence Ministry. Even after a series of drastic cuts, orders for rocket engines usually came to manufacturers with "state promissory notes" instead of cash. As a result, the manufacturers amassed big debts to power and steam generating stations, suppliers of raw materials and sub-components. Meanwhile, Gazprom, the world's largest producer and exporter of natural gas, appeared on the market, looking for highly-effective gas-pumping units. Derivatives of aircraft engines were found to be the best solution. Unfortunately, Gazprom did not have a sufficient amount of cash to finance the engine-makers because its customers - power and steam generating stations operating on natural gas - were rarely paid by industrial enterprises for electricity and heat consumed.
Cutting The Knot
This unique operation, which happened in 1996 and involved 250 enterprises, was followed by a series of other such deals. Those enabled NK Engines' members to produce engines and turbines worth Rbs 1 trillion. To make the process of mutual payments easier, the engine-makers merged into one structure - the already-mentioned NK Engines. Another reason to get united was the fact that the Russian legislative process gave considerable privileges to industrial unions in the form of reduced dues and tax payments into the state budget.
Revival of Metallist-SamaraThe "new scheme of mutual payments" has also rescued Metallist-Samara factory, a specialist in combustors for rocket and aircraft engines, from collapse. Due to a lack of cash for operations, by 1995 the enterprise was about to die. From May 1995 to December 1996 the factory was under the control of arbitrary managers, who included it in NK Engines. This move allowed the factory to increase output of products by 30-35% in 1996 and by 15-16% in the first half of 1997. Subsequently, the debt to power stations has been reduced by Rbs 19 billion and all debts to small companies paid off. Moreover, the factory has delivered products worth Rbs 16 billion to various state structures as a means of paying off its debt to the state budget. The situation at other enterprises has improved as well. This year Gazprom awarded Motorostroitel and the Kazan Engine-Building Industrial Association orders worth Rbs 800 billion and Rbs 500 billion respectively for gas-pumping stations, thereby loading their production lines up to capacity. By the year 1998, NK Engines plans to increase the volume of sales by 45%, with an appropriate rise in using its manufacturing capacities up to 50% from 10-12% in 1995.
NK-93NK Engines invests revenues from sales of rocket engines and industrial turbines into the development and introduction into mass manufacture of the NK-14E and NK-37E compact power stations on the base of aircraft engines, NK- 14ST and NK-36ST gas-pumping units, and the NK-93 ducted-fan aircraft engine. With a thrust of 16 t, the NK-93 offers a much better specific fuel consumption in comparison with the Perm Motors PS-90A, at 0.49 kg/kgf*h instead of 0.595. As of today, a large portion of the NK-93 development has been covered. Seven development prototypes have been built and tested on ground stands. NK Engines and Gromov's Flight Test and Research Institute (LII) are now putting together a program of flight tests on a modified Ilyushin Il-76 flying laboratory. The engine-maker is preparing the eighth operable example of the NK-93 for installation on the inner engine pylon under the port wing of the test-bed. LII says some 18 months are needed to prepare the flying laboratory and outfit it with test equipment. The modified aircraft may have its first flight at end of the next year. The Ilyushin and Tupolev design bureaus are involved in this project as the manufacturers of the Il-96, Tu-204 and Tu-330 aircraft, the first candidates to be powered by NK-93s.
In The PipelineEngines with "NK" tags are well known to aviators, gas-producers
and cosmonauts. Nikolai Kuznetsov's NK-8-III gave a flying start for the
Tupolev Tu-154 airliner, whose production run exceeded nine hundred units.
Gas- pumping units with "NK" labels transfer over 30% of Russian
natural gas from remote places in Siberia to literally everywhere in Europe.
But the most important is that Samara supplies engines for the Proton and
Soyuz launchers, the most numerous and successful Russian space workhorses.
The ten RD-33 rocket engines sold to the USA last year were also built in
Samara. When I was visiting this beautiful city on the Volga river, local
people told me that even a bad fence can fly into space on a good engine.
"We have not proved it yet, but so far there have not been any failures
of space flights due to our engines," they added with pride. |
Speaking at the
briefing, Igor Shitarev, president of NK Engines and general director of
Motorostroitel, said, "Foundation of the NK Engines finance- industrial
group will help save and increase the great potential of the engine-making
industry created by the genius designer Nikolai Kuznetsov. The finance-industrial
group is not merely a new form, it is the logic of survival and further
development of the industry."
After a thorough
analysis of the situation, ELRoss company, headed by Oleg Ernezaks, proposed
a complex scheme of writing off mutual debts, which was accepted by all
sides involved. Following this scheme, the RSA handed over its "state
promissory notes" worth Rbs 500 billion to Gazprom, which wrote off
the debts of power and steam generating stations. Those, in turn, wrote
off the debts of engine-makers, their subcontractors and raw material suppliers.
At the end of the chain were rocket engines and industrial turbines for
RSA and Gazprom respectively.