HARP PLANT HISTORY

1945 – beginning of construction of the eighth state and the first in modern Ukraine bearing plant, GPZ-8.

1946 – the first three types of single-row ball bearings were mastered before the actual launch of the plant.

1947 – On November 1, the first stage of the plant was launched. By this time the plant had already produced 14 types of bearings, the production volume was about 200 thousand bearings.

1950-1951 – Technical re-equipment of production facilities: Installation of automatic polishing machine for rings, aggregates for mechanical processing of chips and conservation facilities.

1959-1963 – fast growth of production due to introduction of advanced technologies and automation of production process.

1964 – beginning of creation of automatic lines for processing the rings of railway bearings and new technical basis for forging.

1966 – the workers were awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour – the highest award of that time – for the development of new products and outstanding achievements.

1975 – the regular reconstruction of the production base of the plant was completed.

The 1980s. – the plant becomes the leading enterprise in the country producing rail car bearings. Production is organized on 32 turning, grinding and heat treatment automatic lines.

1994 – due to transition of Ukraine to market bases, the new legal form – Joint-Stock Company Kharkov Bearing Plant (HARP JSC) – was established.

2000 – a new stage in the development of the plant begins with the arrival of new large investor and shareholder – the UPEC Industrial Group (JSC UPEC) – the first corporation in Kharkov region, which has undertaken to promote the introduction of high technology in production. Due to introduction of new technologies and improvement of the management system, HARP products for the first time undergo a surveillance audit of the International Certifying Organization TUV CERT for compliance of the production technology with ISO 9002 standard.

2001 – establishment of UPEC TRADING LLC, official distributor of HARP with exclusive rights to sell bearing products; as well as sales offices and a wide dealer network in Ukraine and CIS countries.

2002 – completion of the first stage of technical re-equipment and modernization of production within the framework of the investment project with a total cost of $ 26.7 million, realized by UPEC Industrial Group. After the completion of this program, the plant began the production of bearings of increased accuracy classes with a limited level of noise and vibration.

2007 – beginning of radical renewal of the HARP turning capacities, amounted to about € 5 million;

2008 – in February 2008, by order of the Ministry of Industrial Policy of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Bearing Industry Design and Technology Bureau was appointed the parent organization for standardization in bearing industry;

2008 – completion of the second stage of technical re-equipment and modernization of production, total investments amounted to $ 12 million, in particular – creation of the hot stamping shop for bearing components; which high quality met the European requirements for the automotive industry.

2009 – as a part of the project on modernization of production of railway roller bearings, there was launched production of cassette roller bearings; the annual production capacity was increased from 0,8 million to 1,2 million bearings.

2010 – high quality and reliability of HARP bearings for railway transport was confirmed by JSC "Russian Railways" – one of the largest railways in the world.

In 2008-2010 years, HARP implemented a comprehensive automation system KSA-2008.

The project on organization of production of railway bearings on the territory of the Russian Federation under the trademark HARP was started with creation of the Oskol Bearing Plant.

HARP has become a leader among the CIS bearing companies and started promotion of the new development to the CIS countries – doubled cylindrical roller bearing CRU duplex, which successfully undergoes under-control operation on Russian railways.

2011 – production capacity of railway roller bearings is 1.2 million per year. UPEC has started creation of laboratory for certification testing of railway bearings.

UPEC has started the creation of a laboratory for certification testing of railway bearings.

2012 – for the first time HARP introduced energy-efficient cassette-type bearing units (TBU 1520 HARP, CRU-Duplex K2) at the world's largest exhibition of railway industry InnoTrans 2012 (Berlin, Germany) and received an award "World premiere". (In 2014 HARP will repeat this success).

2015 – beginning of production of completely new product – HARP AGRO UNIT, which has wide application in domestic and import agricultural machinery.

2016 – within the framework of strategy of production of widely used bearings for agricultural machinery, HARP expands the range of products with bearings and bearing units of a new generation – inserts bearings of ES, EX series, bearing units.

The controlled operation of the innovative bearing assembly of the new generation CRU Duplex on the network of the Russian Railways was successfully completed.

2017 – HARP obtained status of an approved supplier of components for the world leader in bearing production – Schaeffler Group (Germany).