It began with a forge
It began with the forge of the merchant Otto Erbe at Terensberg near Riga, where in 1887 they set about making saws, knives and files. The business grew. As early as 1895 the joint-stock company Otto Erbe was formed in Riga to make tools. Its products were known for their quality throughout Russia.
April 1916. The plant was evacuated to Nizhny Novgorod. Sixty-one people worked there then. The equipment was 18 machines and one 60-horsepower engine. In 1918 the plant was nationalised, and in 1925 it was named Metallist.
A TIME OF GREAT GROWTH
The plant developed and improved, and in time became the country's largest maker of saws and knives for the forestry, paper, leather, rubber, steel and other industries. Shops were continually reorganised and rebuilt, and new ones were constructed. The company pioneered many technical innovations.
1926 — saw and industrial-knife production was split into two shops.
1929 — the central plant laboratory was set up.
1932 — a new tool shop was started.
1935 — the steelmaking and rolling shops were commissioned. The plant ceased to depend on imported metal and was named the Metallurgical and Tool Plant.
1955 — oxygen was used on a wide scale for steelmaking in Russia for the first time. The plant was the first in Russia to master the industrial technology of continuous casting. It was a pioneer in two-layer and three-layer steels for machine building.
Supplier to the whole country
The company became the centre of toolmaking for the whole industry of the former USSR. The plant met 80% of the country's need for frame, rip and crosscut saws. The workforce exceeded 4,000 people.
1961 — a continuous casting machine and a new high-capacity line for frame saws were started.
1964 — a unit for vacuum treatment of liquid steel outside the furnace was commissioned.
1961–1964 — the electric furnaces were modernised and their power was increased.
1962–1963 — a shop for industrial knives was commissioned.
1967–1970 — a hammering technology for circular saws was mastered, which raised their working life.
New grades of high-strength special steels were developed, and production of three-layer steel for plough mouldboards and two-layer compound steel for flat knives was mastered. Alongside the traditional saw and knife range, the plant began making spare parts for agricultural machines.
At the turn of the century
1977 — to speed the development and introduction of advanced technologies, the enterprise became the Gorky Pilot Metallurgical Plant. The electric furnaces were rebuilt, a new boiler house and a repair and machine shop were commissioned, and dividing saws, chipper knives and other products went into production.
1991 — the Nizhny Novgorod Pilot Metallurgical Lease Enterprise Stal (NOPMAP) was formed on the basis of the plant.
1994 — the company was reorganised as the open joint-stock company Gorky Metallurgical Plant LLC.
As for most enterprises of the former USSR, the move to a market economy was not easy for GMZ. It had to learn to work in a competitive environment, master new methods of management and change its relations with customers. There was not enough money to renew equipment and technology.
A new era in the plant's history began at the turn of the millennium, when the company Astreya became its owner. A development strategy and market planning appeared, and cooperation grew with foreign companies on new technologies and with banks on investment.