Uralmash

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Uralmash is a heavy machinery plant in Yekaterinburg, Russia, and a key part of the OMZ engineering group. The name comes from Urals Machine-Building Plant, and the nearby neighborhood is also called Uralmash.

Construction of the plant began in 1926, and it started operating in 1933 as part of the USSR’s push to industrialize. In the lead-up to World War II it used some foreign equipment. During the war, Uralmash produced armoured hulls, the T-34 tanks, and assault guns. After the war, the plant expanded into mining and metallurgical equipment, making shovels, drilling rigs, crushers and mills. It helped develop draglines for open-pit mining, with longer-boom models introduced in the 1960s, and its drilling gear supported oil and gas exploration across the USSR, including very deep offshore rigs.

In 1971 Uralmash became the lead plant of a larger industrial association. In 1992 it reorganized as an open-ended joint stock company, and in 1996 it joined the OMZ group. Gazprom bought a controlling stake in OMZ and Uralmash in 2005. In 2007 OMZ and Metalloinvest formed a larger metallurgical equipment complex that included Uralmash. The plant has had several leaders over the years. In 2016, Uralmash announced a plan to form a joint venture with India’s SRB International to supply heavy equipment for India’s steel and mining sectors.

Today Uralmash continues to produce equipment for mining, metallurgy and drilling, building on more than eight decades of history.