Prodamet

(Company for the Sale of Goods Produced by Russian Metallurgical Plants), the largest monopoly in prerevolutionary Russian industry.

The Prodamet syndicate was created by agreements and contracts concluded in July 1902 in the southern mining region. It was financed by large French, German, Belgian, and Russian banks, including the Azov-Don, International, and Commercial-Industrial banks. Between 1902 and 1905, it had a monopoly on the sale of sheet iron, axles, beams, and cast iron pipes. In 1908 it took over the sale of merchant bar iron, and in 1909 it established monopoly control over the sale of rails. By 1914 about 90 percent of the country’s metallurgical works outside the Urals had been absorbed by the monopoly, which accounted for 85 percent of the domestic sales of ferrous metals. In foreign markets, Prodamet enterprises joined an international rails pool. During World War I, Prodamet reaped huge profits from the sale of military hardware. Representatives of the monopoly served in the government’s “regulatory” agency, the Metallurgical Committee. In 1918, Prodamet was nationalized by the Soviet Government.