[Trade Journal]
Publication: Crockery & Glass Journal
New York, NY, United States
vol. 100, no. 18, p. 16, col. 1-2
The Russian Glass Industry
A special committee appointed to examine the question of incidental expenses in the Russian glass industry recommends, in regard to the management, that the various factors of the industry should be decentralized, whilst the main control should be still under one directive body. In view of the trade with China, Manchuria, and Mongolia, the committee decided that a special Far East branch should be set up. The great peasant population is also to be specially catered for. It is established that the quality of the goods produced has improved compared with a year ago. But the varieties are to be more carefully classified. Particular attention is to be paid to the export possibilities in the direction of Persia, Afghanistan, Eastern China, and Turkey. The Prodasilikat will open two new sales branches — one at Vladivostok and one in Samara — and it will introduce the principle of payment “by arrangement” in the factories. High-pressure glass insulators, the production of which is being inaugurated in the Russian factories for the first time, will be, according to I. I. Kataigorodsky, four times cheaper than the porcelain ones, and their finish will be easier and simpler. A special electrical furnace, Swedish type, will be installed shortly to produce the necessary high temperature for smelting the insulator glass. — The President of the Board of the Prodasilikat says that the special committee of the Supreme Economic Council, after taking cognizance of the details gathered abroad, has decided to buy American bottle-making machines on the Libbey-Owen system. The agreement with the American Trust, which holds the patent and produces the machines in its own factories, will shortly be signed by the Russian-American Trading Bureau at New York. It is expected that in the course of four or five months they will be ready, and their installation, with the tank furnaces prepared in advance, will take no more than a month. Generally it may be assumed that at the beginning of the coming economic year the first machines for producing bottles will be working in the Russian factories. The first installations will take place in the southern factories of the Chimugol combination. At the same time, for the preparation of pharmaceutical vessels American [spell:"Linch"'"Lynch] machines are being ordered. These will be first installed in the small factories of the Central district, and in the south even sooner than the Owens machines. At the moment the chief problem is the acquisition of fire-resisting materials, and, as such, made in the Russian works, are of inferior quality, the required supplies for the initiation of the mechanical exploitation will have to be bought abroad. [not finished]