Company attributes
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The factory was established on July 21, 1947 on the basis of Koenigsberg Amber Manufactory (the heritage of "Stantien und Becker" company).
By the Decree of the President of Russia Vladimir Putin and the Decree of the Federal Property Management Agency the shares of JSC "Kaliningrad Amber Factory" have been transferred to the State Corporation "Rostec" as an asset contribution of the Russian Federation.
In 1947, the Kaliningrad Amber Factory was founded on the basis of the Koenigsberg Amber Factory, which was part of the State Amber Manufactory in the times of East Prussia - the world's largest enterprise for industrial mining and processing of amber.
During the following decades the enterprise was successfully developing, increasing its production, increasing the assortment and volume of production - from mass series of amber articles to dielectric insulators, varnishes, enamel paints and also components for chemical industry.
In 1958, instead of the excavator method of stripping, fraught with serious soil collapses, the quarry introduced a more economical and safe method - hydromechanization, which is used up to the present day.
When the capabilities of the German Walter open pit, established back in 1912, were exhausted, a new open pit, Primorsky, was commissioned on the basis of the company in 1976, where mining is still carried out today. The project envisaged a more modern technology of amber mining and enrichment with the use of a multibucket excavator to excavate amber rock for the enrichment plant using sea water.
The depth of occurrence of the amber sequence, which is a sandy-silty clayey rock of marine origin consisting of quartz, feldspar and glauconite rocks, is defined in the range of 50-60 m in the Primorsky quarry. The thickness of the thickness varies from 5 to 7 m.
The rock is extracted using an excavator, which places the rock in a cone of spoil on top of the scarp. The cone of rock is eroded by a hydromonitor. The resulting pulp flows by gravity to the dredge. Large amber is extracted while still in the quarry, fished out manually with nets.
Next, a dredger pumps the slurry from the pit to the concentrator. The length of the pipeline is more than 1 km. It rises from (-13) m to +27 m. Pumping the slurry is not only a transport operation, but also an important technological operation. More than 90% of the slurry is removed from the process and discharged to the tailings. Then the material is sent for concentration to the main and control drum separators, where it is sorted by screens.
In the finishing and sorting cycles amber from the quarry and enrichment unit is finally cleaned from sandy-clay admixtures, chips, lignite and other impurities, dried, sorted and weighed.
Dried amber is then immersed in tubs with water, where it sinks, and light impurities float up and are removed. Then amber is served into baths with a solution of table salt, density of 1,12 g/cm3, where heavy impurities sink and amber floats up.
Due to the uniqueness of the enterprise, our own experience is the main reference point for improving technology and equipment.
From the very beginning of the works, its main production was focused on the production of jewelry and haberdashery items. By the mid-1960s, they accounted for 90% of the plant's total production.
In the first post-war years, old surviving German equipment was used, and the main processes of amber processing were carried out manually.
In the second half of the 1950s, amber processing technology began to improve: a chemical-mechanical amber plating shop began to be built, and bead production was converted to the center-rolling method in rotating drums.
In 1964, a new jewelry factory was put into operation and equipped with the latest domestic and imported equipment.
By the beginning of the 1980s, the factory had five mechanized production lines: round decorative beads of natural amber, gold and silver alloy jewelry with non-precious metals by centrifugal casting, round smooth beads of pressed amber, amber pressing, amber skinning. At the end of the 1980s, copying and sculpting machines were purchased in Japan, which opened new opportunities in amber processing.
The Amber Combine has always been famous for its jewelry production, which employed famous artists and high-class craftsmen. The main products of the Amber Factory in 1950's - 1980's were jewelry and haberdashery items - up to 2 mln pieces per year. The symbol of success of the jewelers of those years is rightly considered to be the Spider brooch, with over a million Spiders produced during half a century.
The period of prosperity of the factory, associated with a massive increase in the production of amber jewelry, in the 1990s was gradually receding, and with a succession of reorganizations in the 1990s the company entered a prolonged crisis phase. Rapidly falling production continued until 2007.
Today the factory keeps the traditions of quality amber processing and a wide range of jewelry in classical and updated designs.
Unique highly artistic articles are created, the most complicated pieces of jewelry are made according to individual orders. Creative opportunities and rich experience of working with sunstone help amber-cutters and certified artists to master new techniques and themes.
