OREANDA-NEWS. On 28 January 2009 was announced, that JSC Preses nams new Supervisory Council elected its Chairpersons as well as appointed a new Management Board of the company. Raivis Veckagans, Vice-president of JSC Latvijas kugnieciba, was elected as Chairman of the Council, Armands Puce – as Deputy Chairman. Leadership of the Management Board was entrusted to Igors Stepanovs, who is a specialist in the area of paper production and printing with nearly 15 years of international experience.

The new JSC Preses nams Supervisory Council, which was elected last Friday, decided to expand the company’s Management Board, and the new Management Board Chairman Stepanovs will be joined by Management Board members Ilga Kurate, Mihails Bureshs, Dace Mihтenoka and Raivis Skuja, who was also a member of the previous JSC Preses nams Management Board. Solvita Masule and Anatolijs Mahlovs have left the Management Board.

The new Management Board Chairman of JSC Preses nams, Igors Stepanovs, has extensive experience in paper production and printing, and since 1995 he has held senior positions at companies in Canada, Finland and Russia. For instance, Stepanovs was finance director for the Tetra Laval Group – a paper manufacturer - in Russia and Finland, finance director for International Paper, and operations director for Papier International du Canada in the Canadian province of Quebec. He also served as deputy director for strategy at the Mekran wood processing company in Russia.

Stepanovs has also served as an advisor in Canada for the Canadian and Eurasian Russian Business Association. He holds a degree in mathematics and economics from the University of Latvia and an MBA from the IMD International University in Lausanne, Switzerland.

“We will work hard in future years to strengthen JSC Preses nams as the quality leader in the European Union and CIS in various areas of the printing industry. I see substantial growth opportunities in book printing, where the company’s advantages are based on a unique and recently opened production line, but also in the field of newspapers, magazines, and other types of print materials,” says Stepanovs.

JSC Preses nams is the largest printing concern in the Baltic States and the leader in the sector in that region. In the summer of 2008, JSC Preses nams opened its new book printing facility in the village of Silakrogs in the Riga District. Total investments in the facility amounted to LVL 13.5 million, which makes the company one of the 300 largest enterprises in this area in the world. Each month JSC Preses nams prints some 150 different magazines and 70 different newspapers. It also prints hundreds of millions of labels a year. The largest shareholder of JSC Preses nams is LASCO Investment, a daughter company of JSC Latvijas kugnieciba, which owns 95.4% of the share capital.