TOP ESTONIAN ENTERPRISES

The year 2008 was the best year of history for
BLRT. The company has been able to preserve
good tradition to move each year towards increasingly
high economic indicators. Still at the
end of 2008 the first sure signs of the fall in the
world’s ship construction market could be detected
and therefore the major fall of the current
year was not a surprise for Fjodor Berman.
Then it was clearly seen that several clients and
contracts remain without financing. The surprise
or not, the general situation in ship construction
is quite poor at the world market.
Especially high quality and flexibility is required
from the company. According to Berman he
can’t remember as hard time as now.
“The situation in economy is really bad. Currently
one could say that now this is the time of
stabilization, but there are no signs of the improvement,
let alone the new rise. At the beginning
of the year there was abrupt fall, 30% of the
fleet of many countries are also now unused, as
there is nothing to transport. If there are no
goods and the ships are so to say put aside, we
have also nothing to repair. The banks relate to
the ship construction projects extremely repellingly
– no ship construction contract was
concluded in May in the world, I do not remember
this kind of situation.”
Regardless of the current market situation no
one has put the tools aside in BLRT. Vice versa
– BLRT continues construction. The very important
moment by the activities is also that
BLRT is not focused only on ship construction
and the sustainability is guaranteed by different
market niches where one has settled down. At
the beginning of the year the market of purchase
of scrap metal decreased and as the
company sells in the Baltic countries quite a lot,
the sale of BLRT dropped by half. According to
Berman the situation would be very sad, if the
company would operate only in one field of activity.
Luckily this is not the situation.
“We have contracts concluded for long term and
we get the orders also now, we try to operate
strongly in the niches – we construct the ferries,
special vessels for the projects of sea wind
parks. For example the sea wind park is under
construction at the open sea, 80 kilometres
from the coast of Germany. We are connected
with this project for several reasons. The special
ship with the value of 1.5 billion kroons for
the construction of wind park, floating transformer
platform and 70 tripod foundations of
seamills have been completed. The market demand
in this part increases almost everywhere,
even in Estonia. The negotiations are currently
held also for the construction of the new similar
products for Norway,” Berman states by
adding that the renewable energy is one strategically
important trends of BLRT Group to be
developed.
THE FLOW OF LABOUR HAS IMPROVED
A couple of years ago, when economy was still
on the rise the companies found it hard to have
access to skilled labour. BLRT suffered quite
much due to the lack of labour and then the decision
to purchase subcontracting from the Chinese
companies to Klaipeda plant was born.
The hiring of foreign labour has been profitable
– the Chinese are very decent and there are
practically no problems with them. The Chinese
are not cheap labour, as they have worked in
USA and Europe and they are internally higher
disciplined than the people coming from the European
Union with the same qualification.
Since September this year the Chinese companies
are also in Tallinn plant of BLRT by subcontracting,
as regardless of the improvement
of the labour market there are still not enough
specialists of adequate qualification and experience
who would be able to participate in the international
infraprojects. Thus BLRT has
cooperation with the Chinese in the projects of
ship repair, renewable energy and stainless
steel processing.
“The government and parliament has made the
steps for accelerating the process of importing
the term foreign labour from the third countries.
This is the policy of many countries – Germany,
Poland, Sweden. Another question is that life
changes – yesterday we had also higher salary
level in Estonia, today the salary level has fallen,
but according to law we should keep the average
salary level of the last year by paying salary
to the foreign labour – this is absurd. World has
changed, but we are inflexible, we still live as
before. This though means that we lose so competitiveness,“
Berman is worried.
The company’s manager is pleased that the situation
has still generally improved. These professionals
who went to work aboard once are
employed in Marketex belonging to BLRT
Grupp. Now these approximately 40 persons are
back and their work is satisfactory. “These are
the specialists at high level who are satisfied
both with the attitude of BLRT and the salary
level,“ Berman says.
THE ORDERS FROM THE FOREIGN
COUNTRIES BRING SUCCESS
When Europe encountered economic recession,
most of the governments started to take steps
by supporting the purposeful investment to the
infrastructure objects and export. BLRT has got
quite major projects for itself – for example,
currently the order for the construction of the
metro tunnel to Stockholm is being fulfilled,
1000 tons of ready products have already been
sent there and soon the same quantity will follow.
In Denmark BLRT won the national competition
of bridge construction – for that
purpose the metal parts of the bridge will be
made. According to Berman the key question of
the whole Estonia is how to improve the capability
and competitiveness of the companies.
“We adjust the state budget for already third
time, as not enough cash is collected, but I say
that by increasing just the taxes and excises this
would be received even less. The question lies in
raising the competitiveness!“
Due to the market situation BLRT will not plan to
expand this year, it will rather focus on keeping
stability, competitiveness and effectiveness. •
Photo: BLRT
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