Aleksey Kadilov, who headed the Baltiysky Zavod (part of the state-owned United Shipbuilding Corporation, USC) for 9.5 years, will leave his post in April. This was told by two sources of Vedomosti, close to USC, and three employees of shipbuilding enterprises in St. Petersburg.
One of the interlocutors clarifies that Kadilov’s next five-year contract ends on April 16, 2023 and will not be extended. “He will turn 71 this year, and after finishing work on Vasilyevsky Island (the Baltzavod is located there. – Vedomosti), Alexei Vasilyevich is going to rest,” adds another source.
Kadilov came to Baltzavod in 1976, according to the company’s official website. By 1994 he had gone from a ship builder to a production director. At the plant, he took part in the delivery of heavy nuclear missile cruisers. Then, for 10 years, he headed the St. Petersburg representative offices of CJSC Belukha and Rostechimport, headed the Rybinsk shipbuilding plant, and served as vice president of the Volgotanker management company. Prior to his appointment as general director of Baltzavod, he was deputy general director of the Almaz Marine Plant in St. Petersburg, chief engineer and first deputy general director of the Sredne-Nevsky shipbuilding plant.
Interlocutors of Vedomosti in the shipbuilding industry generally positively assess Kadilov’s work as head of the Baltzavod. “He took Baltzavod when he was lying on his side. A few years later, the lead icebreaker Arktika of project 22220, the floating nuclear power plant (FNPP) Akademik Lomonosov, and several serial nuclear icebreakers were commissioned, ”a source at one of the shipbuilding enterprises notes. But another interlocutor says that none of the orders allegedly were delivered on time. “However, given the technological and organizational challenges that had to be overcome, this was hardly possible,” he admits.
According to SPARK-Interfax, Baltzavod is chronically unprofitable. The last time he made a profit in 2017 was 2.7 billion rubles. at 9.7 billion rubles. revenue. Since 2018, the plant’s loss has been increasing: 1 billion rubles. for 2018, 6.4 billion rubles. in 2019, 7.9 billion rubles. in 2020 (data for 2021 and 2022 were not disclosed).
What is Baltzavod building
Baltiysky Zavod is one of the largest shipbuilding enterprises in Russia, specializing in the construction of a nuclear-powered icebreaker fleet. In 2020–2022 handed over to Atomflot three icebreakers of project 22220 Arktika, Sibir and Ural with a capacity of 60 MW each. The fourth and fifth icebreakers of this project, Yakutia and Chukotka, are currently under construction. It is also planned to build the sixth and seventh icebreakers of the series – “Kamchatka” and “Primorye”. The plant also built and put into operation the Akademik Lomonosov FNPP with a capacity of 70 MW; it was put into operation in Pevek in 2020.
An acquaintance of Kadilov calls him a “strong leader”, and among the strengths of a top manager he notes the ability to select personnel and mobilize subordinates to solve large-scale tasks. “About 10 years ago, developers massively bought out the land plots of the shipyard on Vasilyevsky Island for the construction of housing. He managed to stop this expansion,” recalls the source.
One of the interlocutors also notes that Kadilov managed, on the one hand, to maintain good relations with the current head of the directorate of the Northern Sea Route of Rosatom, the deputy general director of the state corporation Vyacheslav Ruksha (he headed Atomflot, which is the main customer of the Baltzavod in 2008–2018. – “ Vedomosti”), on the other hand, to build a “smooth working relationship” with the General Director of USC Alexei Rakhmanov.
Vedomosti sources at the shipyards of St. Petersburg and those close to USC say that the search for a new head of the Baltzavod “is going on both within the USC perimeter and beyond.” As potential candidates, they name the general director of the Sredne-Nevsky shipbuilding plant USC Vladimir Seredokho, with whom Kadilov worked at Almaz before his appointment to the Baltzavod.
Another interlocutor claims that a fundamental decision has been made to transfer Baltzavod under the control of Rosatom (Rakhmanov confirmed the possible transfer of 51% of the shares of Baltzavod to the state corporation in January. – Vedomosti), so the head of the enterprise will be “a top manager from the former Izhora Plants”, passed in the summer of 2022 under the control of Rosatom.
In August last year, Atomenergomash (AEM; the machine-building division of Rosatom) bought the production facilities of the Izhora industrial site in St. Petersburg Kolpino from Gazprombank (Vedomosti wrote about this on August 25, 2022). What assets were transferred to Rosatom, the parties did not disclose, limiting themselves to a vague wording that they were “involved in the production of equipment for the nuclear industry and petrochemicals.” As a result of the transaction, they became part of AEM-Technologies (the largest enterprise in AEM), two branches were created in St. Petersburg – AEM-Special Steels and Izhora. AEM Technologies is headed by Igor Kotov, AEM Special Steels is headed by Sergey Kuznetsov, Izhora is headed by Andrey Alekseev.
Rosatom, AEM-technologies and USC declined to comment, an AEM representative did not respond to a request.
Mikhail Burmistrov, General Director of Infoline Analytics, believes that in the context of the transition of the Baltzavod under the control of Rosatom, the appointment of a person from the structure of the state corporation as the head of the enterprise is logical. Independent industrial analyst Maxim Shaposhnikov believes that the change of the general director should not significantly affect the rhythm of the enterprise, but a person close to Rosatom “will be able to speed up work on all projects.”
“The Baltic Shipyard is currently operating at its maximum capacity since the Soviet era. If in Soviet times more than 11,000 people worked at the enterprise when loading both slipways, today more than 6,000 people work on one slipway (the second one is not used. – Vedomosti), ”Burmistrov emphasizes. In his opinion, the plant can reach the level of loading of the Soviet period in the case of “reanimation by the state corporation of the project for the construction of a dry dock on the site of the second slipway.”