In a low-key ceremony, American razor and blade manufacturer Gillette officially inaugurated Monday its $40 million factory in St. Petersburg f one year after the plant started production.
Company officials said it was usual procedure to inaugurate a factory a year after its opening.
The new factory, St. Petersburg Manufacturing Center, is Gillette's first modern manufacturing facility in the country.
"This opening becomes the future of our company," said Gillette chairman and CEO Michael Hawley.
While currently operating at 70 percent to 80 percent capacity, the factory is slated to produce 600 million double-edge blades, 105 million Slalom cartridges and 50 million disposable razors annually. The plant exports almost 25 percent of its production.
The 22,000-square-meter plant employs 225 people.
Gillette officials said they chose to build the factory in St. Petersburg largely because of a 10-year relationship with the Leninets holding company. Leninets, once a major avionicssupplier, was the Soviet Union's second-largest producer of double-edge blades.
Leninets and Gillette entered into a joint venture, Petersburg Products International, in 1990. By 1993, the two were producing blades and razors, with Gillette controlling a 78 percent share of the company, up from its initial 65 percent. In 1996, the company attained 25 percent of the razor and blade market in the CIS.
At this point, Gillette decided to go it alone and build its own modern production facility.
"We've had a very successful decade in Russia. We will continue to broaden our business here," said Hawley.
Gillette controls 75 percent of the country's $100 million shaving products market, having sold almost one billion blades last year.
Gillette said the country was its fastest growing major market in the first quarter of 2000. Gillette sales jumped nearly 40 percent over the last year.