History

	One and half century history is difficult to grasp or describe as one’s personal biography… Thus, if someone asks to tell about the plant Melinvest, different people will distinguish three absolutely different images. Three Time Periods. Three Names. Single Plant. The youngest and most up-to-date image belongs to “Melinvest” OJSC — laser machines, modern facilities design, colorful mounts at international exhibitions, active participation in the industry life, weighty voice at representative agricultural forums in Russia and abroad, recognition by large holdings, confident leading position in the market — in short, all elements of the modern notion “brand”. This is the way the Plant appears in respectable industry publications, for the young generation of managers, for participants of the new agricultural market.
	The major image bears the name “Gorky Machinery Plant named after М. Vorobjyov”. The largest Grain storages and Flour mills of the Soviet Union were connected with this name, providing for the country leadership in grain and flour production, reliability, high quality and high capacity of equipment, manufactured for a full due, labor romantics of wild lands reclamation, inspiration of inventors and innovators and reputation of an expert. This is the way the Plant is familiar for long-service employees, merited agrarians of the country, academicians, designers, institute teachers.
	And the historical image of the Machinery Plant Partnership “Dobrovykh I Nabgolts” is nowadays familiar only for a little number of the Russian industrial history researchers, inquisitive regional ethnographers, and patriots of the Plant and Nizhny Novgorod area. Industrial capital increase in Russia, all-Russia grain market at Nizhny Novgorod trade-fair, Volzhsky fleet, labor movement and revolutionary Kanavino — are the main features of the legendary image. Anyone who has ever told the history of the Plant chose one image out of these three — the key one for the epoch depending on its ideology and targets. But is there inner connection and succession among these three “plants”? Can these images be united?
	As Eternal As Bread One hundred fifty years of uninterrupted work, permanent profile — flour milling and grain storing equipment production, actual in all time periods, regardless of the social and economical order — such long destiny of an industrial enterprise is unique. What is the reason of such stability, which is not characteristic for the modern world with its new, changeable and mobile economy? Where is the grain of truth? Perhaps it is in grain. From year to year, sowing grits and gathering in the crops, farmers create the very essence of life, its basis — bread. This cycle is as everlasting as the Universe. But silos and flour mills are an integrated part of this cycle. Within the period of a century and a half Russia has turned from agrarian to industrial economy, from private capital to national property and back, from command-and-control management methods to market management… The villages, the rural and urban lifestyles, the very principles of farming and bread making technologies have changed significantly… Equipment, manufactured by Melinvest has always been in demand. During hard years the plant was on-stream, providing for food supply security of the country. And today the Plant is ready to play its role in alternative power-engineering and food supply activity in the Russian and international markets. Melinvest has always created and keeps creating History.