What is the background of steel melting or steel factories in this country?
There has not been a steel melting factory here. There have been a considerable number of machine shops for producing equipment and pipes for the oil industry. But these were all Soviet-built. Most have been closed down because the conditions have changed, the markets have disappeared and there are higher expectations for quality. So they’ve stopped. But there are possibilities to rejuvenate some of these industries. What is the background of the building where you’ve set up the factory? Above: Rebar manufacturing section of the Baku Steel factory. Originally, this building was intended to be a factory; it was built in the 1980s to produce small airplanes. Then Moscow changed its mind and decided to convert the factory to make large furnaces for the entire Soviet Union. But it never really went into operation. So we bought the factory, not for what it had been intended for or for the equipment in it, but basically we bought the shell. We needed a shell. Since all of these empty factori
