Giants on a confident march

BELAZ to deliver a record number of mining dump trucks to Russia by the end of the year

Ambassador of Belarus to Russia Dmitry Krutoi told journalists about this fact during the opening ceremony of a 90-tonne BELAZ vehicle in the permanent exhibition at VDNKh in Moscow, “This year BELAZ will sell about 900 vehicles, this is one of the historical records in our relations with the Russian Federation. For certain models of the BELAZ line, they simply cannot even fulfil these orders and are forced to transfer them to the next years. These are pleasant chores, you know, the amount of work is huge.”

Photo by Aleksandr Kushner

According to him, more than 11,000 Belarusian heavy dump trucks are currently operating in Russia in coal, diamond and other types of quarries. Dmitry Krutoi added, “BELAZ’s strategy now is to partially replace those components that fell under sanctions. There are not very many of them, because for the last ten years the plant has been very actively engaged in an internal import substitution programme, investing $1.5 billion in a variety of areas, so this is now a non-critical problem. But in order for BELAZ to successfully compete in the Russian market with Western European and American companies that have not left, as well as with Chinese companies, it is forced to divert serious resources into the construction of service centres. This is now the number one task in Russia: from Kuzbass to other quarries, and this is exactly what the plant is doing.”
In turn, the Director General of the Belarusian automobile engineering company OAO BELAZ Sergei Nikiforovich spoke about what equipment is most in demand in Russia. These are dump trucks with a carrying capacity of 130 and 220 tonnes. These machines show a great performance in places of operation and bring a serious economic effect to the end user. He also noted that the company is currently working on expanding deliveries to Russia, including drones. Two unmanned 130-tonne dump trucks are already operating in Russia. There are also companies that are interested in acquiring unmanned systems.

Based on materials of sb.by