OREANDA-NEWS. May 23, 2011. A factory producing oriented strand boards (OSB) will be launched next June in Karelia. It will be the first enterprise in Russia producing brand new timber-based material for low-height housing construction. The large-scale investment project is implemented by Kalevala Timber Factory Ltd. Head of Karelia Andrei Nelidov has visited the building site of the factory to be on May 19. He has inspected the course of works and held an operational meeting concerning issues of the project implementation.

Currently, the factory is at high readiness, there goes building and assemblying, the already purchased machinery and equipment will be delivered in July. According to the management, total amount of investments into the project is planned at the level of 9 billion roubles.

– Oriented strand boards are similar to plywood, but of a much better quality. Such boards are used to build economy-class residential cottages. There are factories producing OSB in Czechia, Latvia, Germany, Norway. However, there is no such enterprises in Russia yet, – says Klimenti Kasradze, chairman of board of directors of Kalevala Timber Factory Ltd.

At the first stage of its work the factory plans to make 300,000 cubic meters of produce a year and process up to 605,600 cubic meters of raw pulpwood a year. When the enterprise starts to work to full capacity, the output will make over will make more than 500,000 cubic meters of produce.

The factory intends to provide itself with wood raw material purchasing it from lumberers, as well as through organization of own timber harvesting. For this purpose Kalevala Timber Factory Ltd. plans to purchase logging, timber-carrying and road-building equipment. As a whole, the factory will offer jobs for 312 workers.

According to the order of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation, the investment project of Kalevala Timber Factory Ltd. is included in the list of priority investment projects in the field of forest exploitation.

As has Klimenti Kasradze has pointed out, all the issues concerning implementation of the project have been set by not, and the Government of the republic has rendered invaluable help regarding this issue.

– Construction of such a complex is an event both for Petrozavodsk, and for the whole republic. It shows evidently Karelia's active development. It will be an advanced production. The scale is tremendous, – Andrey Nelidov esteems the project. – Karelia is a land of forest, and it is extremely important that processing enterprises producing goods of high quality appear in the republic. In this sense construction of the factory is of nation-wide importance. All works are on schedule, and if next June we launch the factory, it will be a good example of successful work.

According to the Head of Karelia, construction of the enterprise is one of the largest investment projects of the republic, and he intends to supervise it personally until all the works completed.