OREANDA-NEWS. March 21, 2012. Another ten Czech and Slovak companies have today signed Memoranda of Understanding with Rusatom Overseas, daughter company of the Rosatom Group.

They are ETD TRANSFORMATORY a.s., I & C Energo a.s., KABELOVNA KABEX a.s., MSA, a.s., Sandvik Chomutov Precision Tubes spol. s r.o., SLOVENSKE ENERGETICKE STROJARNE a.s., TES s.r.o., VUJE Ceska republika, s.r.o., VWS MEMSEP s.r.o. and    ZPA Pechky, a.s.

They have thus joined the 15 Czech machinery and construction firms that, in October 2011, became potential suppliers for Rosatom’s nuclear projects in the Czech Republic (including Temelin), in the Russian Federation and other countries around the world.

The companies involved have received a catalogue of approximately 4,000 products and services that they could supply to Rosatom (the mother company of ZAO Atomstroyexport and OAO OKB Gidropress, who are members of the Czech-Russian Consortium MIR.1200 which is competing for Temelin completion).
 
“We already offer long-term business opportunities abroad to Czech and Slovak industry,” said Leos Tomichek, Executive Vice-president of Rusatom Overseas. “Rosatom currently participates in the construction of 30 nuclear blocks in ten countries, which is the highest share of all Temelin completion bidders. In order to be able to honour our global commitments, we are looking for reliable suppliers all over the world. It is, however, only in the Czech Republic that we can, thanks to the experience of local industry with our technology, build the suppliers’ chain immediately and without wide-ranging investment into machinery equipment or training of human resources”.

“In total, Rosatom’s plans for the purchase of equipment and services for nuclear projects are worth more than USD 300 billion by 2030. We already work with Czechs today. For example, for two blocks of the Indian Kudankulam nuclear power plant, nine Czech companies supplied us with valves, pumps, cables and other equipment worth 58 million dollars", he added.

Miroslav Fiala, General Director of SKODA JS a.s., the leader of the Czech-Russian Consortium MIR.1200 bidding for Temelin completion, added: “Today’s memoranda are another concrete step that MIR.1200 is taking to involve Czech and Slovak industry as much as possible. We are following up on our seminar organized in February, which introduced interested companies to the conditions for supplying projects abroad and for Temelin completion.”

Jirн Polman, CSc., Managing Director of SANDVIK Chomutov Precision Tubes, spol. s.r.o., one of the companies that signed the MoU, said: “Signing the Memorandum opens up export opportunities for our company to many countries in the world, most of which are priority countries of the new draft export strategy of the Czech Republic. This means, inter alia, support of the Czech Export Bank, that provides loans financing Czech supplies abroad. In addition to that, the MoU presents an opportunity to participate in the Temelin NPP completion, in case the MIR.1200 consortium wins the tender. From an economic point of view, the Memorandum is an important step for the further development of our company.”

The MIR.1200 Consortium is one of three candidates for the completion of the third and fourth unit of the Temelin NPP. The leader of the Czech-Russian consortium is SKODA JS a.s. which invited the cooperation of ZAO Atomstroyexport and OAO OKB Gidropress, both daughter companies of the Rosatom Group. The consortium MIR.1200 offers an evolutionary nuclear energy project called VVER-1200 which draws on the experience of more than 1,290 reactor operation years of VVER type nuclear power plants. It draws on tried and tested designs with increased safety and is a unique combination of the latest active and passive control systems which makes it one of the best representatives of the III+ generation reactor.