Gdantsev Iron Foundry

In addition, iron ore is being developed at the village of Gdantsevka, against the metro station Krivago Rog.

- Materials for assessing the lands of the Kherson province.

Significant reserves of iron ore have been known since the 17th century, but they were hardly developed, largely due to the fact that there were no large forest areas nearby (at that time, charcoal was used as fuel in metallurgy), as well as for transport problems (products of nearby enterprises were delivered to the market by river transport system or horse-drawn transport ).

A little later, Prince Potemkin sent a team to the south of Russia, along with Professor Levanidov, for geological surveys and the latter in their course discovered, at the confluence of the Ingulz and Saksagan rivers, deposits of iron and copper ore, coal, kaolin and graphite . After a report on the results of the research, Potemkin ordered, based on these studies, to build an iron foundry for casting artillery shells on the Ingulets River, near Krivoy Rog, and an earthenware factory for making earthenware from local kaolin, but after his death the work on their construction was curtailed.

The first industrial development of iron ore began in Krivoy Rog in 1881 by the Krivoy Rog Iron Ore Society, founded in Paris in the same year (according to other sources in 1880 ^[8] ), with a cash capital of 5,000,000 francs ^[3] , on the initiative of A N. Pol , the son of the second lieutenant of the Russian army . A mine was opened on the right bank of the Ingulz. The open-pit iron ore was supplied, for smelting, to the Donetsk plant of the Englishman Hughes (400 versts), and later to the Alexandrovsky plant of the Bryansk joint-stock company.

At the Saksagansky mine in the Oak beam , in 1881 555 thousand pounds of ore were mined. Price per pood 2 kopecks. Ore is bought by the Novorossiysk Society of Hughes. The main and only type of delivery is horses and oxen. The distance from Krivoy Rog to the Yuz factory is 400 ver…

- From the report of A.N. Paul to Paris.

Exploiting the subsoil of Russia, the Krivoy Rog Iron Ore Society faced the problem of the efficiency of its production: when ore was mined, poor ores, that is, which had a low iron content, were only 42%. It became economically unprofitable to transport poor iron ore over long distances, and Alexander Paul convinced shareholders of the idea of ​​building a plant. But he failed to realize it, in connection with his sudden death.

The plant was built in the period from 1890 to 1892 under the direct supervision of an engineer of Polish origin Martin Feliksovich Szymanowski.

The grand opening of the plant took place on September 4, 1892, which was reported by telegram to the Mining Department of Russia , dated September 6 ^[3] .

The first cast iron plant issued November 8, 1892 ^{[6] [10]} .

In 1895, the plant arranged electric lighting and water supply of the factory territory and all premises.

In 1901, the cableway to the Gdantsevsky Plant was opened. In 1901, at the mines of French society in the town of Krivoy Rog, the police overseer was the college registrar Manuil-Arthur Alfonsovich Baron Engelhardt .

The purpose of the plant consisted solely in the smelting of cast iron, it was not converted to steel and rolled, which is what distinguished this plant from other South Russian metallurgical plants, in which a number of other more or less complex plants were usually concentrated, except for the blast furnace. Coke for production was delivered from the Oryol-Elenovsky mine of the company (near the Almaznaya station), where there were 40 Koppe system furnaces (they did not work for 1906).

Later, the Gdantsev Iron Foundry began to produce refractory bricks and other clay products ^[2] (Kryvyi Rih brick (tsigelnoy) plant, now destroyed).

Having settled in Yekaterinoslav , I soon visited Krivoy Rog and examined the Gdantsevsky Metallurgical Plant . It belonged to the French Joint-Stock Company of Kryvyi Rih Ores. The representative of the company in Russia was engineer Kolberg, a Pole with a German surname; according to his instructions, the first two blast furnaces were built. In France, he bought for them a special horn construction. During my visit to the Gdantsevsky plant, Kohlberg already lived in St. Petersburg, and the director of the plant was Pan Rogovsky, a foreign engineer who received me kindly and authorized inspection of the plant, in which the head of the blast furnaces was Pan Jacobson. I expected to see something interesting at the Gdantsevsky plant , but was disappointed. Kohlberg built two very old designs of small furnaces, in which, as I was explained at the factory, it would be more profitable to melt cast iron than in large ones. All foreign technicians in the South, and after them many Russians, adhered to this opinion ...

The furnaces of the Gdantsevsky plant , as well as some other southern plants, were a monument to blind imitation of Europe. When we were building new plants, of course, it was ridiculous for us to design small furnaces.

- Academician M. A. Pavlov , “Memoirs of a Metallurgist”, Kirov , 1992

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Factory

The factory had, in 1906 :

• a quarry with an adit with a narrow gauge road for the movement of trolleys ^[5] ;
• three blast furnaces , each with a volume of 200 cubic meters, with a height of 18 meters and a daily output of 400 pounds (two blast furnaces do not work);
  • at each blast furnace a foundry covered with iron, and a blower of 300 forces;
  • one of the blast furnaces had a steel hearth, invented by French engineer Boisinau; for the first time such a hearth was introduced in Russia;
• ten water - tube steam boilers with a heating surface of 260 square meters each;
• 4 batteries of closed coke ovens (for the preparation of coke), 20 furnaces each, Koppe systems equipped with electric coke pushers ^[12] ;
• hot blast shops;
• mechanical repair shop;
• central power station;
• water pump , with engine room, on the right bank of the Ingulets River;
• ways, factory and mine:
  • broad gauge - 9 versts;
  • narrow gauge - 5 versts, also called - Narrow gauge railway of the Gdantsev Iron Foundry . The approximate opening date of the railway is 1901. Later, the narrow gauge mine track was replaced by a broad gauge railway line.
• Rolling stock two steam locomotives and 4 platforms .

Later built:

• brickworks;
• grinding platform for the preparation of cement ^[5] .

At the factory

For the needs of employees and workers at the plant there were:

• 40 residential buildings, 8 apartments in each;
• a hospital with 15 beds, with her a doctor and two paramedics ;
• welfare fund established in 1890;
• a teahouse arranged by the Guardianship of Popular Sobriety ;
• factory hotel, the common hall of which played the role of a club for employees;
• leisure park;
• amateur theater "Giant", 1913;
• Church of St. Brigitte.

An access road (now dismantled) from the Krivoy Rog station with a length of three versts and 276 fathoms was constructed to the plant ^[3] .

Large-scale development of the Kryvbas deposits became possible only after the construction of the railway to the Donbass .

During the Civil War, the Gdantsev Iron Foundry was destroyed. Employees and workers fled or were destroyed by Makhnovskaya Volnitsa . Restored in the Ukrainian SSR in 1924, as the Central Mechanical Workshops. After the launch of the KMZ, in 1933, the plant began production of the first Soviet punchers , scraper winches, scrapers , loading machines, containers for lifting ore, mine stands and other equipment for miners of the Union. In 1937 he was named after the republican newspaper "Communist" ^[3] .

Owner

• Shareholders of the Krivoy Rog Iron Ore Society (Krivoy Rog Iron Ore Society), Paris , France .

Shareholders of OKZHR received per share, worth 1,000 francs, net dividends in:

• 1894 - 1,154 francs;
• 1896 - 53,700 francs;
• 1897 - 137,000 francs.

That is, the market value of one OKZhR share increased 110 times.

Leadership (years)

1890-1892

• Managing Director, Engineer M.F. Shimanovsky

1892 ^[13]

• Chief Engineer - Kolberg
• Assistant to the chief engineer - Matvey Rogovsky, educated in Liege
• Blast Furnace Manager - Jacobson
• The first removable domain master - Mashukov
• Second removable domain master - Curaco

1905

• Director - M. Rogovsky.

In 1896, the State Reserves Plant smelted about 1,800,000 poods of pig iron (29,484 tons) ^[14] .

The Gdantsev Iron Foundry smelted up to 3¼ million poods of pig iron and made refractory bricks and other clay products (up to 57,000 pounds of products) ^[2] .

In 1900, 3,227,520 poods were smelted.

In 1903, a little more than 2,000,000 pounds.

In 1904, about 3,000,000 poods of cast iron, and the maximum productivity was achieved in 1912-1913.

Iron smelting amounted to about 5,000,000 poods annually, or 2.7% of the total production of this type of product by all metallurgical enterprises in the South of Russia ^[3] .

In 1916, smelting commercial iron was less than pre-war ( World War I ) by 7.3%.

• Strong spirits in the vicinity of the Gdantsev Iron Foundry were strictly forbidden to sell ^[15] .

• Kryvorizhstal

• L. Shtrippelmana (translation by A. N. Pol ) “South Russian deposits of magnetic iron ores and iron luster in the Ekaterinoslav (Verkhnedneprovsky uyezd) and Kherson provinces”, Leipzig (in German), St. Petersburg , 1873;
• The Novorossiysk Calendar, Odessa , 1893;
• List of populated areas of the Kherson province, Provincial Statistical Committee, Kherson , 1896;
• “Plant of the Novorossiysk Society”, Katerinoslav , 1896;
• Em. Pletzer, photo album "Krivoi-Rog-Gdantzefka", 1899;
• "The most comprehensive reports of the governor for 1889 and 1899";
• "Statistical and economic reviews of the Kherson lips", Kherson, 1894-1900;
• "On the Catherine Railway", St. Petersburg. , 1903;
• V. I. Lenin, “The Development of Capitalism in Russia”;
• “On the Catherine Railway”, Issue I, Yekaterinoslav , 1903, - P. 58-59;
• R. S. Livshits, “Industrial location in pre-revolutionary Russia” - M. ,: Publishing House of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1955, - S. 169-170;
• The documentary and journalistic book “Milestones of the Labor Path” (on the 75th anniversary of the plant);
• Essays on the history of technology in Russia: Mining, metallurgy, energy, 1871-1917. M. , 1973. S. 152;
• Edited by Academician V. I. Smirnov, Ore Deposits of the USSR, in 3 volumes, Moscow, Nedra, 1978;
• Funds of the Krivbassproekt Institute, Kryvyi Rih ;
• Academician M. A. Pavlov , “Memoirs of a Metallurgist”, Kirov , 1992;
• I. A. Rukavitsyn, “Kryvyi Rih in postcards, documents, photographs”, Kiev, “Book-plus”, 2010;
• A. A. Beck , “Curaco”.
• S. Z. Moshensky, “Securities Market of the Russian Empire”

• Site 1775, Gdantsev Iron Foundry.
• Kryvyi Rih Museum of History and Local Lore
• KZGM website.
• Gdantsev Iron Foundry and now PJSC KZGM at Wikimapia.
• Website Working newspaper, According to the laws of the jungle, or Who and how destroys the pride of domestic mining engineering.
• Em. Pletzer, Krivoi-Rog-Gdantzefka photo album, 1899.
• Website pulse newspaper, From the history of crime of Kryvyi Rih.