Transmashholding shareholders buy 50% of super condenser maker Elton - paper
MOSCOW. Oct 4 (Interfax) - The co-owners of railway machinery manufacturer Transmashholding (TMH) , Iskander Makhmudov and Andrei Bokarev, have acquired 50% of battery maker Elton from former top officials at the Russian Federal Property Fund, Vladimir Malin and Kirill Tomashchuk.
The deal was closed recently, Vedomosti reported, citing Tomashchuk.
"We proposed Makhmudov and Bokarev become shareholders, as they are shareholders of TMH, a key consumer of Elton products," he said. Bokarev confirmed the deal, the paper said. However, they did not disclose the amount of the deal.
Elton develops super condensers, electrochemical capacitors with very high energy density that charge faster than traditional batteries, within a maximum of 30 seconds instead of hours, and just as rapidly give up energy. They are used in engine start systems and brake energy recovery systems in transportation.
Malin headed the Federal Property Fund in the early 2000s and Tomashchuk was his deputy. Malin left the Fund in 2004 and Tomashchuk followed a year later. Tomashchuk founded Elton in 1994 with Sergei Razumov, who later founded the Utkonos store chain. Razumov sold his stake in Elton in 2009 and Malin became a shareholder of the company a little later, Tomashchuk said. In 2010, Elton joined the Skolkovo center and received a grant of 251 million rubles to develop production of a new generation of electrochemical capacitors. The shareholders are supposed to contribute an equivalent amount to the project.
Tomashchuk said that Elton and TMH are developing a new hybrid shunting locomotive and subway cars with accumulators. TMH is expected to build more than 30 hybrid locomotives per year.
An employee of TMH confirmed that such development work is underway, but he refrained from projecting potential demand for such locomotives.
It is difficult to predict demand for subway cars, but an agreement has already been reached with the management of Moscow's metro to conduct such development work, Tomashchuk said.
Elton also hopes to work with Yo-Auto, the joint venture between billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov's Onexim group and Andrei Biryukov's Yarovit Motors that has developed a new line of hybrid cars. Negotiations on supplies have been underway since the spring of 2010, Tomashchuk said, and Elton has developed new capacitors "especially for the Yo-mobile. Capacitor sets for several cars have already been delivered and they were installed in the vehicles unveiled earlier this year.
Biryukov confirmed that the company is holding negotiations with Elton and other manufacturers of capacitors, but he declined to name them. The suppliers of components for the Yo-mobile are supposed to be chosen by November, he said.
Tomashchuk and Bokarev did not provide details about the project.
Rusnano, the state nanotechnologies company, currently puts the world market for super condensers at $400 million-$500 million, but expects it to grow to $2 billion-$3 billion by 2015, largely thanks to a 33-50% drop in the price of super condensers, to 1.8-2 cents per farad. Several Russian companies are developing super condensers, including Elton, Tekhnokord and Enkod, but none have yet set up mass production.
