Lomography

Irshansk Titan Factory
written by wil6ka on March 5th, 2009 , 12 submissions , 6 comments (2 votes)

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My job brings me to weird places and I like it. I was doing a report on titan-factory in Ukraine. That stuff is used in almost every product. From plastics to dying soda and probably oranges are made out of it as well. It is a very well paid resource and China and other industrial superpowers are really hot on getting the white powder. It makes grand money but funny enough the factories look like shit, and I like it. It’s the old pre-and post-soviet rough look.

Pipes are rusty and the trucks look like moon-cars, but without the sci-fi technology, without the wheels and without …anything that would make it nice. But I like it. You will have to bring some effort to pay them a visit, but you have a good chance if you apply for a job, tell them that you are a journalist or if you just greet the director from me. He kinda liked me. We chatted a little and he appreciated me speaking Russian. As a consequence he gave his driver Andrei hundred dollars and asked him to drive us through the country. Nice chap. Even though the business runs successfully it’s rather stupid.

They are mining in the countryside two hours from Kiev and then they transfer the resource to the island Crimea, where it is processed and made a good. Quite an effort, but this is a system which was invented by Stalin eventually. Make all the regions of the Soviet Union dependent on each-other and they will work together. But who cares. Until the pipes don’t rust totally, all the factories are shaky but not ruins and until they still have the resource it is still enough money in the pot to keep the business running. If you got there you really check into the Hotel “Titan”, how great is that?
Click on the wikimapia card and scroll left to the great mines. It’s cool!

Links: http://wikimapia.org/#lat=50.7532612&lon=28.7290496&z=13&l=5&m=a&v=2
http://www.igok-hotel.com.ua/eng/hotel.htm
http://www.titanexport.com/eng/profile/history.php