NOVACARD BUILT THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PLANT IN EUROPE (Finance, February 9-15, 2004, №5)

Technologies: The plastic cards plant NovaCard from Nizhny Novgorod got the certificates of the international payment systems Visa and MasterCard. Nowadays the enterprise can produce the international bank cards.

To celebrate the occasion the direction of NovaCard organized the excursion on the enterprise, invited the journalists, - as the organizers of the actions assured, it was hardly for the first time for ten-year history of its existence. It is likely that it was for the first and last time: as Finance discovered, the requirements lodged by Visa and MasterCard to the safety system when manufacturing their products are so high that access by outsiders on the enterprise will be absolutely excluded. At least, this will concern primarily those workshops where the international cards will be produced (by hearsay, they will be located in the secret basements). New rules have already touched the staff of NovaCard – Visa has prohibited wearing of overalls with pockets (all employees walk in white overalls on production sites), that is why NovaCard had to buy new party, but without pockets.

Last year NovaCard produced 100 mln. plastic cards, mainly, for the telecommunication companies. The bank cards were produced just for the members of the Russian payment systems Golden Crown and Union Card. The international plastics will be cheaper than bought in Europe at 10-15% for the domestic banks (by means of economy of transport and customs consumptions). But the main profit for the banks is in that NovaCard will take orders by small batches. The foreign partners can’t do this.

Until recently the bank cards of the international payment systems in Russia were produced by the only enterprise – Moscow Rozan Finance, which was certified by Visa. This year Visa is going to certify two plants else: ORGA (Zelenograd, «daughter» of German ORGA) and Goznak (Perm).

Negotiations with the international systems NovaCard started carrying on in 1998, however, crises burst out and bank were occupied otherwise. The negotiations with Visa were recommenced in 2001 when The Head of the Russian representative office of Visa, Lue Naumovsky, arrived in Russia. It was supposed that the CEO of NovaCard, Vladimir Krupnov, specially waylaid him in the restaurant, asked somebody from the escort to visit his enterprise. Fortunately, a detached man turned out to be a specialist on new technologies and was able to appreciate the production. Honestly, they had to wait for more than three years while the plant moved in the new building, that if the former Kazansky rail station which after the reconstruction was added to the architectural monuments of XIX century. Vladimir Krupnov confessed when he bought the building nobody mentioned about its heritage. Today it is appreciated as the most beautiful plant in Europe and the safety system of NovaCard – the best in Russia.

Before visiting the plant all visitors they had been sworn to secrecy (if they were lucky to learn something). In a simplified version the card production can be described the following way: at first a card’s model is made, its copies are deposited at the large piece of plastics which is painted and fried by ultraviolet (otherwise the paint won’t soak into). After that strip is plotted at the plastics from both sides (for inscriptions were not erased) and placed under the blotter of high pressure and then plastic sandwich becomes a monolith. It is ripped up at separate cards and a chip or a magnetic trip is added on it. Almost all operations are automated – the staff just load fabricated parts into the machines and check the quality of a final product. The waste is pulverized and directed to the local pipes for sanitary engineering plant.

The procedure of biometry, which all employees passed daily, turned out to be more interesting. It arises from the identification of a person for parameters of a hand. At the beginning a special device take and remember them (the parameters are kept secret), and then they are read by an analogous device installed at the Security. A man comes in the sluice, is waiting while the doors are closed, put a hand on the device and waits. If a hand is identified, the second door is opened leading to the workshops of the plant. If not, an employee comes up at the Security and tries once again. For the delegation of twenty journalists this procedure took forty minutes, it told on lack of skills of work with the clever device. When this operation is implemented by the staff, it turns out much better: there was such impression that the device recognized face of each of them. All the doors of NovaCard leading to the workshops are blocked, only the staff, which has access, can open them by its magnetic card. In case of emergency, like in fires, all doors is temporally unblocked in order to avoid victims. It is possible to learn who and when opened one or another door with the help of camera-recorders the plant is supplied with.

Vladimir Krupnov is the main shareholder of NovaCard. Iguana, presented by the staff, lives in his office, the Director keeps from outsiders (Finance, we did not manage to persuade him to photograph with the pet). The enterprise’s wage level is 8-9 thousand rubles, it is higher than the average level in the region (5-6 thousand rubles). There is the dining room, herewith meals is partially subsidized out of budget of the enterprise. All that differ Vladimir Krupnov from Oleg Deripaska whose structures bought the largest Nizhny Novgorod enterprise – Groky Automobile Plant (GAZ). As one of the inhabitants confessed, almost all social programs are liquidated on GAZ; the point comes that all the staff is given three coupons per day for visiting of toilet - in the rest of the time it is necessary to suffer. Women suffered form that situation very much.