Problem with the lifts: the situation with elevators is deteriorating in the country

There is a difficult situation with elevators in Russia. It is known that due to the sanctions, the largest imported elevator manufacturers left our country: Otis, Kone, ThyssenKrupp, Schindler, Kleemann and others. Their combined market share was 15-20%. Their products were mainly used in the commercial sector – in shopping and business centers, as well as in high-rise buildings and residential buildings of the high price segment.

It would seem that domestic manufacturers were given an excellent chance for import substitution, however, according to experts, the entire first half of 2022, the production of elevators in Russia, on the contrary, fell by as much as 41%! And this is despite the fact that the elevator fund in the country is becoming obsolete very quickly, increasingly becoming the cause of accidents: from 2017 to 2021, 253 people were injured in elevator accidents in Russia.

By the end of 2022, the total wear of the elevator park in multi-apartment residential buildings of the country was estimated at 23%, that is, 124 thousand out of 540 thousand elevators are subject to replacement by February 15, 2025, and the degree of wear of the elevator facilities in 22 regions of the country exceeded 50%, sometimes reaching 70%: more than 100 thousand elevators are working over 25 years, and therefore have already passed the service life.

The Minister of Construction and Housing and Communal Services Irek Fayzullin reports that 26 production facilities in the country are capable of producing about 70 thousand elevators per year. It seems that this is more than enough? Not quite, - analysts of the "Kremlin Mammalogist" believe.

It turned out that developers often prefer Chinese elevators instead of domestic ones.

Experts remind that the CEO of the HOUSE.Vitaly Mutko dreamed of creating a large elevator holding in the country on the basis of the Shcherbinsky Elevator Plant (SchLZ), the Karacharovsky Mechanical Plant (KMZ) and Siblift, which would cover 40% of Russia's need for elevators. However, according to him, this required modernization in the amount of "about 2-3 billion rubles." The spread of figures, according to experts, indicates that Mutko did not particularly believe in his idea. And so it turned out: there is still no holding, the surveyed developers claim that instead of domestic novelties, builders prefer products from Asian manufacturers, which are both better and cheaper. The channel cites the example of Chinese Xizi elevators, which are 20% cheaper than analogues from SchLZ.