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Severnoye Design Bureau - History

With the end of the Great Patriotic War, the shipbuilding industry of the USSR was faced with the task of expanding and increasing production, as well as restoring the naval personnel. September 5, 1945 at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) with the participation of representatives of the Navy Commissariat and the shipbuilding industry, a draft military shipbuilding plan was discussed, which resulted in the signing of the Council of People's Commissars decision of November 27, 1947 "On the 10-year military shipbuilding plan". A large-scale restoration of destroyed and construction of new shipyards began, with the simultaneous consolidation of existing and the creation of new design organizations.

March 1, 1946 on the basis of a group of employees of TsKB-17 and a group of employees of the design bureau of the plant for them. A.A. Zhdanov division was formed, originally listed as a branch of the plant KB them. A.A. Zhdanov. At the same time, employees of the plant to them were transferred to this division. A. Marty (factory "Admiralty Shipyards") and TsKB-32.

On April 22, 1946, by order of the Minister of Shipbuilding Industry, the said unit consisting of 216 people was transformed into an independent enterprise - Central Design Bureau No. 53 (CDB-53) for designing squadron destroyers and patrol ships. It is from this date that the history of the Northern Design Bureau has been counting.

Over time, the Bureau’s activities were greatly expanded, and it actually became the leading design enterprise for combat surface ships and other classes, including large anti-submarine ships, missile cruisers, frontier patrol ships, and heavy nuclear missile cruisers. It can be said without exaggeration that the Bureau’s specialists created almost the entire ocean fleet of the Soviet Union, and many of the projects became truly epochal, being, by a number of parameters, the recognized benchmark in world shipbuilding. Western experts have repeatedly pointed out that Russian ships are magnificent designs of industrial design, combining great impact power, excellent protection, efficiency of engineering solutions and a dynamo-aggressive architectural appearance.

In January 1966, TsKB-53 was renamed the Northern Design Bureau (SPKB). In 2001, the bureau was assigned the status of federal significance and it became known as the FSUE “SPKB”, from 2008 - OJSC “Northern PKB”, and since 2015 - JSC “North PKB”. In total, over the years of the existence of the Northern PKB, about 500 ships and vessels were built for its projects.

Civil shipbuilding

Along with the design of ships for the Navy, the Northern PKB continues to develop designs of ships for the civilian fleet. The beginning of this work was laid in the 1950s. The first civilian project developed by the Northern PKB was the project 393 whaling ship . The lead ship Mirny was commissioned to the customer in 1956.

Also, for the fishery fleet of the USSR, transport refrigerators of the project 569A type “Siberia” were designed and built . The lead ship Siberia was transferred to the customer in 1962.

The exit of the Soviet Navy to the ocean expanses demanded a significant expansion of work on the study of the seas and oceans, including in the field of hydroacoustics. In this regard, the Bureau has developed projects for the conversion of two dry cargo ships to research vessels - "Sergey Vavilov" and "Peter Lebedev".

In 1967-1974, nine Passat- type weather vessels for the Hydrometeorological Service of the USSR were retrofitted for the Northern PKB projects , their construction was carried out in Poland, and seven Akademik Kurchatov- type vessels for the USSR Academy of Sciences were built in the GDR.

Due to the large scope of work for the needs of the USSR Navy, the Bureau did not participate in the design of civilian ships until the late 1980s, but then due to the changing political and economic situation in the country, the Bureau’s specialists again proceeded to design the civilian fleet.

For SPKB projects:

• In 1994, three universal bulk carriers with a deadweight of 6,900 tons of the project 15760 were built at the shipyard "Severnaya Verf" (St. Petersburg).
• in 1995, at the Yantar Baltic Shipbuilding Plant (Kaliningrad) two multi-purpose dry-cargo vessels were built with a deadweight of 12,000 tons of the project 17380.
• In 1996, two chemical tankers with a deadweight of 5,800 tons of Project 90101 were built at JSC Baltiysky Zavod (St. Petersburg) .
• In 2005, a high-speed rescue supply vessel project 22180 was built under the project SPKB at the Ural shipbuilding plant “Zenit” (Republic of Kazakhstan).

The most promising and knowledge-intensive work in this direction is the development of projects of vessels for the transport of liquefied natural gas. By order of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation, the technical project and conceptual projects of gas carriers of various capacities using different cargo storage systems (Chief Designer D. B. Kiselev) were executed under the Federal Target Program “Development of civilian marine equipment for the period up to 2016”.