RUSAL announces new executive appointments in its Alumina Division

UC RUSAL, the world’s largest producer of aluminium and alumina, has announced the appointment of Andrey Pikhtovnikov, former head of the ‘East’ Production Department of the Alumina Division, as the new managing director of the Achinsk Alumina Complex. Yuri Ovchinnikov, its current managing director, has been appointed the managing director of the Nikolaev Alumina Refinery.

These appointments come as part of the RUSAL human resources rotation programme focused on exchanging the best practices, raising operational efficiency and introducing the RUSAL production system on the company’s production sites, as RUSAL is moving to a new model of plant management, which substantially broadens the authority of managing directors.

‘Our plants will be ‘more independent’, and the key objective for their directors under the current economic conditions is to shift their focus from achievement of individual performance targets to generating higher profits and driving down cash costs at the production site in general. Thus, our alumina operations will become ‘profit centres’ which are more result oriented and with better process efficiency’, noted Pavel Ovchinnikov, the director of the Alumina Division.

The Achinsk and Nikolaev Alumina Refineries have been set an ambitious challenge to increase the output of high-quality alumina, improve the power supply network through modernisation of their coal power plants and curtail electricity consumption per tonne of product, and finally ensure profits required for further capacity growth.