01.08.2006 - ISO 9001:2000

On June 20, 2006, AS Nitrofert was awarded ISO 9001:2000 certification in quality management in the sector of application and manufacture of chemicals, including ammonia and urea, issued by international management systems and certification company "Lloyd?s Register Quality Assurance Limited" (LRQA), which has confirmed conformity of the company's system of quality to the requirements claimed by the international standard.

ISO 9001:2000 being the standard of quality management is based on eight principles of quality management, concentrating on the quality of company management, namely:

• Customer focus;
• Leadership;
• Involvement of people;
• Process approach;
• Continual improvement;
• Continual improvement;
• Factual approach to decision making;
• Mutually beneficial supplier relationship.

In Estonia there are about 646 business organizations awarded ISO 9001:2000 certification.

AS Nitrofert required a little more than half a year to implement in our company the system of quality management in conformity with the requirements claimed by ISO 9001:2000. The internal auditors were the first to be involved in reconsidering the arrangements in the company's paperwork and checking its conformity to ISO requirements, followed by the external audit held by Lloyd?s. ISO 9001:2000 certification has been indicative of continuous and systematic upgrading the quality of the company's products and services. The quality standards are applied in the company's day-to-day performance.

The company's quality policy is customer-focused and involves a range of arrangements aimed at producing and marketing the company's products - ammonia and prilled urea - in conformity with the established production specifications and customer's requirements. Quality policy includes development of technological processes, improvement of labour management and quality control techniques as well as provision of timely shipment of products. According to Aleksei Nikolajev, General Director and Member of Management of AS Nitrofert, after the certification was awarded, the relationship between the company's employees, as well as the company's relationship with the customers has grown more transparent, underway are regular technical and engineering arrangements aimed at upgrading the technological processes and teamwork between the department has strengthened within the company.

AS Nitrofert's quality policy aims at:

• Providing timely shipment of quality products;
• Attaining at least 99% level of customer satisfaction rate;
• Providing compliance with legal and other relative regulations in the company's;
• Accomplishment of reconstruction for the synthesis-and-distillation facility of the urea plant;
• Retrofitting the flow scheme for the intake and feeding of carbon dioxide (to stabilize the operation mode of urea synthesis process);
• Providing the continual functioning and enhancement of the quality management system and of the procedures concerned in compliance with requirements claimed by Standard ISO 9001:2000.