In December 2011 TVEL and Czech ALTA Invest created the ALVEL company. Was the joint venture successful, what did it achieve in a year and a half and what are its future goals? Those are questions answered by the company’s Executive Director Josef Belac.
– Tell our readers about your company, its strategic tasks.
– The Enterprise was created on the basis of the Russian TC TVEL and our ALTA Invest – one of the major companies in the country, whose business is based on power engineering, plant equipment for machine building, ore mining and metallurgic industry, for producing construction materials. Constating documents were signed in 2011, during the President’s Dmitry Medvedev visit to the Czech Republic.
This is a natural continuation of collaboration at the Czech and Slovakian markets in NF supplying. We offer engineering service to the TVEL’s major clients, try to stay closer to European customers and NPP sites and promote TVEL’s and Rosatom’s production and technologies. Another direction is R&D coordination in collaboration with European institutions.
– Where is the head office?
– The company is registered in Brno, engineer’s offices are for now in Prague and at the Temelin NPP. And just this June we opened our Moscow office. – How the shares were distributed? – Since the founders from the very beginning didn’t want to position the company as European, the Czech part is the majority shareholder, owning 50% plus one share more in total. Russian investors have the remaining part of the capital stock.
– Is the staff big?
– 14 people for now. However the company appeared just a little more than a year ago, was started from nothing, that’s why we have many tasks for outsourcing. In future the number of personnel will grow. We try to maintain the balance between the amount of projects and that of specialists.
It’s understood that at the labor-market these days there aren’t many high-class specialists, this problem is typical both for Russia and Europe. We are ready to employ talented graduates, however for this one needs to form a team, able to train the newcomers, pass the knowledge and experience to them. ALVEL is still a beginner, now it is just gaining potential. However, it already implies international projects.
– How do you see the company in five years?
– As a serious engineering business, European-market oriented, a reliable partner for its clients. We have to augment our potential. In three-five years we’ll have about 50 our own specialists, able to perform excellent work, fulfilling orders of clients and operating organizations.
– Let’s go back to the present. Is there any financial success for now?
– We can call the results of the first year quite satisfactory – planned economic performances are fulfilled. This year we are planning to increase our revenues by 3,5 times. Besides we expect significant growth of non-nuclear profit (from 34 to 64%) due to general purpose industrial grade segment: technology transfer (SNF-related projects, technical equipment and machine supply), non-nuclear production distribution of TVEL’s enterprises.
– Where do you see risks in the realization of development strategy? What are the difficulties to face?
– To my mind the biggest risk is in the scenario of nuclear power development in EU, Central and Eastern Europe in particular. The second factor we are taking into consideration is orientation of every state to increase its technological potential. Any country has institutions created at the very beginning of atomic era, with highly skilled specialists working there. They want to take part in processes on their own, accumulate knowledge. What is important here that we show ourselves at the market not as rivals but partners. This approach is accepted by ALVEL from the very beginning. We understand that lack of high-level specialists is the reality both for Russia and Europe, thus we have work to do rather than resources.
– Besides other things ALVER transfers technologies. Could you give us some details of this?
– There are two parts. The first one is TVEL’s product promotion to foreign markets. Our main goal is to make production competitive, for this we have to improve technologies and increase quality. And the second is attracting skilled specialists and technologies of leading Russian and foreign institutions.
– You are planning to supply non-nuclear products. Do you already know how this could be implied? You know the stock-list well?
– This is the first thing we do conducting analysis and studying the TVEL production. Analysis is based on the opportunity of consume and supply to European market. We conduct negotiations on this subject both with Russian partners and with possible clients from Europe. Together with our TVEL colleagues we are trying to find solutions for the best development of this business stream. Our goal are the most promising and long-term projects.
We understand that something may turn out different. We concentrated on directions that have something to do with atomic energy on the whole and at the same time are highly-specialized things themselves. The stress is made on high-quality production. I would say that if in forming potential in the field of nuclear-fuel cycle we are at the beginning of the second year of work, then in general industry we are just starting.
– Your Russian is excellent. Where did you learn it?
– When I was at school there was a wonderful teacher Galina Grigorievna Bankovska. She taught us for four years and she’s the one to thank for my progress. And I also talked a lot to my Russian colleagues during the last seven years.
– How did you get to work with atomic energy?
– As a youngster I was interested in many things – archeology, botany and, finally, astronomy and cosmonautics. But when the moment came to make a final choice I decided to stick to nuclear reactors’ theory and technology. After graduation I always kept working in the field of nuclear fuel.
