Richard Simon, in cooperation with its agent ACPE, has been successful in securing a major £300K contract with Nevinnomysskiy Azot for upgrading the bagging equipment in its fertilizer plant

Despite the reports of economic doom and gloom emanating from the former Soviet Union, Richard Simon, in cooperation with their Moscow agents ACPE, have been successful in securing a major £300K contract with Nevinnomysskiy Azot for upgrading the bagging equipment in their fertilizer plant. Production of mineral fertilizers is one of the most profitable and financially sound sectors of Russia's economy, with an estimated 13 percent of the worlds supply of nitric fertilizers coming from Russia. The relative stability of Russian companies working in the fertilizer industry is the result of continuous demand on both local and international markets.

At present Russia exports over 70% of its urea production and 50 % of its ammonium nitrate.

Exports have increased by 70% since 1991, with most fertilizer going to China and India as wels as to Europe, South America and South East Asia.

Currently ten major producers have over 70% of the total market with Nevinnomysskiy Azot in the top five.

The existing plant at the town of Nevinnomyssky close to the Chechen border,1000km south of Moscow, is some forty years old and is rapidly becoming obsolete and unreliable.

Some 20% of output from the plant is the form of bagged product and recently the company has lost several major contractual battles with customers arising from under weight bags.

To overcome this in the short term, they have had to supply over weight bags, resulting in give away of up to 2%.

The plant produces high grade ammonium nitrate and urea.

The current weighers, which are extremely crude and unreliable, are situated on the floor above the bagging room.

Weighed product falls via tubes into a primitive type of impeller packer and is then fed via a spout into the valve bags.

Each of the three bagging lines has two filling spouts managed by one operator and the condition of the existing equipment is clearly shown in the photograph.

The new system from Simon replaces the old weighers and bag fillers on all three lines with their latest electronic weighing and control technology.

Each line has two Richard Simon UBM 85 nett weighers and GP4 controllers.

One tricky problem faced by the company's engineers was providing the GP4 with Russian script but with help from ACPE, this was overcome with the minimum of trouble.

The weighers are renowned for their performance and reliability even in the harshest of working conditions, making them ideal for such an application.

Temperatures in the plant can vary from sub zero in winter to above 40C in summer.

Ancillary equipment supplied by Simon includes level probes for the supply hoppers, gravity fed chutes and bag filling clamps.

As their sales director, Doug Hacking explains; ' Integrating modern technology with existing older equipment requires special skills and consideration.

Fluctuations in power supplies and air lines are particularly troublesome and it is vitally important to ensure that existing peripheral equipment can cope with the increased throughput of the plant.

At Simon we have built up extensive experience in this area based on installations around the world.

The new equipment will allow Nevinnomyssky Azot to bag 3000 tonnes per day with the plant operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week This equates to a throughput of almost half a million bags a week and more importantly, the give away is being reduced from around 1 kg per bag to less than 50g !