vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #165 / Business / Reading article...

In the downtown part of the city, a beautiful building with red roof and a little tower is almost completed.

The Sakhalin-based Globus company built it out of construction materials previously unknown here and imported from South Korea. General Director Oleg Yugai said that although there is little large-scale construction work on the island, there is a big demand for smaller public buildings that can withstand Sakhalin’s harsh conditions.

Yugai decided that so-called “sandwich panels” would fit the purpose best of all. The panels are sheets of metal filled with synthetic material, and their appearance is striking and even attractive in a city accustomed to Soviet-style concrete block construction. “They are used in many countries’ construction industry, but they are unknown in Russia,” Yugai said.

Globus signed a contract with Chobuk Trading Corp. for the shipment of the panels. Yugai also plans to start manufacturing the cheap and sturdy material locally.

Fire and sanitary inspectors have tested the panel, checking it for combustibility and toxins. The panel passed each exam successfully. However, there are other hindrances to using the panels. Russian construction requirements are slow to catch up with the new materials and technologies.

But local authorities, saying they wish to protect Russian manufacturers, restrict the use of new building materials, he added. They say Russia has its own standards, which the new materials don’t meet. “They should change them,” Yugai said.

Sakhalin businessmen and construction designers have created an Association of Sandwich Panel Manufacturers, and they are trying to change the regulations. The Sakhalin Management Office for Kuril Programs ordered Globus 3,000 square meters of panels. Other companies like Sakhalin Potential, along with fishermen and merchants, are interested too.

Yugai plans to use the panels in construction of the first wholesale market in the oblast. The complex will cost $1.5 million. A longer-term plan is to build fish-breeding factories using the panels.