OREANDA-NEWS. May 06, 2010. Products made by the Dobrush china plant (Dobrushskiy Farforoviy Zavod) are absolutely harmless as far as sanitary standards are concerned. The fact has been confirmed by multiple lab tests in Belarus and Russia, the company’s Director General Oleg Parfenyuk said.

Carried out on 5 April and 10 April 2010, the latest tests used Russia’s GOST R ISO 6486-2-2007 to reveal no lead and cadmium content or figures dozen times below the standard. This is why the company is bewildered by the news that the Testing and Epidemiology Center of the Zabaikalye Territory has found excessive amounts of cadmium and lead in a batch of Belarusian crockery, said Oleg Parfenyuk. “There is another thing we cannot understand. We suggested sending our specialists to Chita several times, but we were denied the opportunity under various excuses, including claims that crockery samples and the documents were already in Moscow. The fact that the center used GOST 30178-96 ‘Raw materials and foodstuffs’ instead of GOST R ISO 6486-2-2007 makes one think hard about true goals of the testing,” said Oleg Parfenyuk. Moreover, the lab is not certified for such tests, he added.

It is known that there is no cadmium and lead in chinaware itself. These metals are present only in paints used to make pictures on crockery. All the china factories in the CIS buy their paints from the same three producers. This is why claims about excessive heavy metal content can be regarded as an attempt to doubt the quality of all china manufacturers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. The question arises as to who can benefit from it, Oleg Parfenyuk said.

According to the Director General, in 2006 the company’s export totaled USD 2.1 million while in 2009 the figure reached USD 6.4 million. In Q1 2010 the export exceeded the amount exported in the entire year of 2006. After that the Testing and Epidemiology Center of the Zabaikalye Territory issued reports about the quality of Belarusian chinaware.

The Dobrush china plant is Belarus’ largest manufacturer of chinaware. The first products were made on 28 December 1978. In 1996 the enterprise was converted into a closed joint-stock company. The company uses a quality management system, which is certified for compliance with STB ISO 9001-2001. The company employs over 1,300 people.