Administration of Lotos Economic Development Zone Interested in Our Students’ Ideas

A discussion meeting with reps of the Lotos Economic Development Zone has been held at the Territory of Writing & Thinking of Astrakhan State University.

Not long ago a delegation of ASU visited the Lotos Zone, whose General Manager Mr. Sergey Milushkin acted as a guide for our people; he showed them the local facilities and helped them destroy some myths related to this zone. The next stage of the partnership was the current discussion at our University.

Dr. Konstantin Markelov, Acting Rector of ASU, emphasized the real value of the joint activities in his welcoming speech: “There is no more essential theme for ASU than its cooperation with those companies and organizations that contribute to economic development programs of Astrakhan Region in particular and Southern Russia in general. Our University ought to participate in those programs directly as a research institution; we ought to contact on a regular basis. We should act as a base for development of new technologies, delivery of projects and programs to develop the research, educational, and HR potential of Astrakhan Region”.

Based on obtained results of their research and their trip to the Lotos Zone, our students prepared reports with hands-on recommendations related to their specializations. In particular, our future journalists carried out a content analysis of media materials related to the Lotos Zone; they revealed regularities in them and developed a number of recommendations how to cover this large-scale project and pursue an efficient image-making policy.

Mr. Milushkin highly appreciated our students’ findings. He promised that their developments would be considered and applied in practice. The General Manager also emphasized importance of this cooperation for both our students and the Lotos Zone: “We need young people, just as young people need us. We could provide them with stable jobs, while they could bring new ideas and prospects to our company”.

Our students advised that the Lotos Zone administration developed their social networks activities by opening a YouTube channel and introducing its corporate hashtag. The Lotos Economic Development Zone is developing actively now; there is a large amount of information that would be of real interest for various target audiences, including its potential staffers or partners. That is why it is essential to develop the right promotion strategy, which our cooperation is aiming at.

Mr. Milushkin and the Lotos Zone residents told about the companies that operate in it. Some technologies that they apply are unique and of high demand. For instance, the Hexa-Lotos industrial facility manufactures geosynthetic woven materials that are applied for road construction. This material has no analogues in Russia. This company has only foreign competitors – in Greece, India, Turkey, and the Czech Republic. The MedInTech LLC is going to launch a hi-tech production of third-generation self-destructive syringes. It will be the first experience for Russia in this field. There is also a unique production of bioprotein for cattle forage by the Protelux Lotos LLC. As for the largest resident of the Zone – the Astrakhan Shipbuilding Plant, it is undergoing a radical modernization and reconstruction to advance to a new level of production.