— What are the most common complaints against you?
— The basic question, not even a complaint, is connected to mechanical engineering: “Do you make heat exchangers and assemble installations? And what plant is your manufacturing based on?”
“We do it by ourselves.”
“What? Have you mastered mechanical engineering by yourself?!” Noone seems to believe this. But when the customers come to our production site (ReinnolC now has 2 of them), then as usual, surprise only grows. Everyone is basically accustomed to Soviet industrial landscapes, but here there are new workshops and many young energetic people.
The second most common question is about the pressure of the law enforcers. It is presumed that a successful business will definitely be squeezed out by the law enforcers or some shady influential people. This way of thinking really bothers me. Honestly, I don't know where they come like this, and don't even hypothetically allow such a scenario. We are an open and public company, especially according to the fact that we started working with the Moscow Exchange in 2021 and issued bonds.
— What was the hardest period during these 11 years?
— I wouldn`t single out one specific period. For example, during the pandemic we grew because we have been implementing several projects that we had been working on previously and we have even launched a new department of water treatment. But the company was in a mode of shortage of resources aimed at growth and development. Our business is very capital intensive. There were times when it was incredibly difficult to look for financing, although I had already called everyone in my entire phone book, so to say. At the same time there have always transpired some solutions.
… I am proud that I have assembled a team that has learned to systematically create new products and improve them. Moreover, we do this for a specific task from the start, understanding the pains and problems of operation and technologists in different industries. But if we talk about specific cases, I would note three that are most relevant. First is the technology for processing industrial waste, the second is the heat exchangers. The third case is in the energy sector.
… we work on a market where it is very difficult to create something completely new and innovative, but even more difficult is, having created it, to come to an established conservative B2B market and explain it.
There are equivalents of our technology, but we have Eastern-specific advantages.
— Like what?
— Our installation can be powered, for example, by the sun. The cost of thermal energy in Russia and the cost of thermal energy in Saudi Arabia are two different things. By the way, in Russia customers pay great attention to capital costs for installation, initial investments and much less to operating costs… For Middle Eastern and African people water is a completely different matter. It is the meaning of their life.
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