During the World War I, the Professor of St. Petersburg Mining Institute, G. О. Chechott, the Mining Engineer by profession, set up a company to fulfill the order of the Russian military office for production of the artillery highly-enriched tungsten based igniters. He invited his colleague, S.E. Andreev, the Mineral Production Engineer, and L.B. Levenson, the Mechanical Engineer, Designer and Specialist in Mineral-Processing Equipment, for cooperation. The company had a short name “Mekhanobr” (mechanical processing of minerals). Therefore, it was the time when the company developed a comprehensive approach to problem solving: research - design - creation of equipment and technologies that have withstood the test of time and proven its viability in practice.
History
Mekhanobr was reorganized as the state enterprise. Each period of activity of Mekhanobr is related to engineering and commissioning of critical national-economic objects, participation in creation of new scientific and design institutes. Each of the periods of activity of Mekhanobr is marked by commissioning of economically critical facilities for the national objects.
Engineering and commissioning of the apatite-nepheline concentration plant (ANOF-1) of the Apatite Trust, concentration plants of Balkashsky and Leninogorsky enterprises and a number of other industrial enterprises being the largest ones in the world at that time.
Engineering, construction and commissioning of the mining companies in Ural, Altai, Caucasus, Kazakhstan, Siberia, and the Far East.
Working in the defense of blockade Leningrad, creation of the complex scientific and research and design institute in the facilities of “Uralmekhanobr” (Sverdlovsk) by the efforts of the Mekhanobr employees evacuated from Leningrad, work of the complex design teams at the mining companies of the country.
Setting-up of the complex scientific and research and design institute “Mekhanobrchermet” (Krivoy Rog), engineering, construction and commissioning of the concentration plants of Yuzhny, Novj-Krivorozhsky, Tyrnyauzsky, and Azerbaijan mining companies, Norilsk, Agarak and Kajaran concentration plants, dozens of mining companies in Russia and Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and abroad.
Creation of the complex scientific and research and design institute “Kazmekhanobr” (Almaty).
Engineering and construction of Pechenganikel, Olenegorsk, ANOF-2 mining companies, Apatite mining and chemical company in the Kola Peninsula, Madneulsk mining company in Georgia, Poltava, Severny, and Central mining companies in Ukraine, Mikhailovsky, Lebedinsky, Stoylenski mining companies in the area of the Kursk magnetic anomaly, Dzhezkagan, Zyryanov companies in Kazakhstan, Almalyk company in Uzbekistanm and dozens of mining companies in the USSR and abroad.
The merits of Mekhanobr in minerals processing was globally recognized by the VIII International Congress for Minerals Processing held in Leningrad in 1968.
Engineering and construction of mining companies of new generation: Kostomuksha mining company in Karelia, Eredenet - in Mongolia.
The concentration and agglomeration plants of the former Soviet Union designed by the institute processed over 70% of nonferrous metal ores, approx. 65% of ferrous metal ores, and produced 70% of agglomerates for blast furnaces.
Early 1990s, during the period of the economic reforms, the Mekhanobr Institute was incorporated, and the Mekhanobr Group was created on its basis. All the engineering and scientific-technical activities of the Group is focused in two companies - the Research and Engineering Corporation “Mekhanobr-Tekhnika” JSC and Mekhanobr Engineering JSC. The SEC Mekhanobr-Tekhnika included the Construction Design Bureau Mekhanobr, experimental and design unit, pilot plant Mekhanobr-L, scientific unit (development of processing equipment), as well as a range of scientific departments and laboratories engaged in disintegration, classification, screening, magnetic and electric separation.
Research and Engineering Corporation "Mekhanobr-Tekhnika" was rewarded by the government of St. Petersburg for outstanding achievements in higher and intermediate vocational education in 2008.
For the first time, a unique project, the non-profit information and exhibition and training center for energy-saving technologies and mineral and technogenic materials processing machinery, has been set up, has been fruitfully operating and constantly developing in the joint facilities of the scientific and production company and the state higher educational institution in St. Petersburg.
The premises of the Center include three functional areas: a lecture room with modern comfortable conference hall; an experimental and demonstration room with the workable specimens of the advanced laboratory equipment; and an industrial room - with the specimens of the most advanced units developed by Mekhanobr-Tekhnika. The process equipment is represented in the Center virtually by all types of machinery and mechanisms that are used at the mining companies, companies of non-ferrous construction materials and in solid waste processing.
L.A. Vaisberg, the Chairman of the Board of Directors and Research Advisor, Academician of the RAS: “I’m convinced that the business based on knowledge and intelligence will change the approach to the staff issue: the potential employees must be professionally trained and, to some extent, personally educated starting from their studentship. Only then we can expect that the highly qualified specialists will come to work. The main resource of the national innovation system is the professional staff”.
Today, the REC "Mekhanobr-Tekhnika" employs 24 candidates of science, 10 doctors of science, and 30 % of its employees are younger than 35 years old. Seven employees of the Corporation are the award holders of the RF Government.
In 2012-2013, Mekhanobr-Tekhnika Corporation considerably renewed the line of the laboratory equipment.
From September 26 till 29, 2016, the International Conference “Plaksinsky Readings - 2016” that was traditionally devoted to the complex issues of resource saving and environmental protection during the mineral concentration and processing was held in St. Petersburg.
The host of the conference was the receiving party - Mekhanobr. “Plaksinsky Readings - 2016” were devoted to the 100th anniversary of the Mekhanobr Institute, the first in Russia engineering, scientific and design organization engaged in mineral processing engineering and technology.
285 participants arrived at the Conference. 7 members of the Russian and national academies of sciences, 42 doctors of scientists, including 32 doctors of scientists from the Russian Federation and 10 doctors of scientists from foreign countries, participated in the Conference as the reporters. The foreign countries were represented by the scientists from Belarus, Kazakhstan, PRC, Mongolia, Poland, Serbia, Ukraine.
The Conference was held at high scientific and organizational level. The reports represented at the Conference demonstrated the profound interest of the Russian and international scientific community in the touched issues of development of the mining and processing industry.
In the frameworks of the “Plaksinsky Readings - 2016”, the youth scientific school was arranged and more than 30 reports of the young specialists and post-graduates were made. In general, 120 young scientists, post-graduates and senior students of the higher educational institutions took part in the hearings of the conference. The contest commission of the organizing committee decided on granting the certificates of appreciation and valuable gifts to 10 participants of the youth scientific school.
Today, the supply plan includes the equipment of the widest range of productivity designed for crushing, grinding, screening and concentration of virtually any solid products. Our equipment covers the most basic and auxiliary process operations on mineral processing study and simulation.
The equipment supplied can be divided into four main groups:
- crushing equipment (jaw crushers, roll crushers, hammer crushers, disk and vibrating shredders, ball mills);
- classification equipment (inclined, self-synchronizing, circular screens, testing screen, rotaps, sieves);
- processing equipment (floatation machines, magnetic and electrostatic separators, electromagnetic analyzers, spiral classificators, filter units, jigs, concentrating tables, thickeners);
- auxiliary equipment (feeders, conditioners, dry sample and pulp splitters, riffles).
The equipment by REC "Mekhanobr-Tekhnika" is widely used by the Russian and foreign companies, research centers, universities, factory and geological laboratories, working in the research of sold natural and technogenic materials.