Recognition and vocation of Maxim Kuzmenok

The news that Maxim Petrovich was awarded a high state award caught him in St. Petersburg. The Smorgon enterprise took part in the International Food Exhibition PETERFOOD-2022. He also did not manage to come to the awards. And then there was the International Food and Beverage Exhibition Food Africa 2022 in Egypt.  The products of the Smorgon Bakery Plant were also in the Belarusian basket. Nothing surprising: in Africa, they have not just heard, but also know what Smorgon porridge tastes like.

Maxim Kuzmenok is sure that such exhibitions are the most effective way to promote goods and popularize the brand abroad. After all, they allow representatives of the business community to meet and conclude important deals.

Having freed himself a little from business meetings, having an award in his hands, the Head of the Bakery Plant gave us an interview. I did not want to focus only on production issues in the conversation. We will try to reveal our hero to the reader from different sides...

The Trials of Chernobyl

The words Settlers and Chernobyl victims are full of grief and fear, willpower and experience. And for Maxim Kuzmenok, these words are painfully familiar because he was born in the Bragin district, in the village Shkuraty. The Chernobyl station is just a stone's throw away. Maxim was only seven years old when a tragedy occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. His father ran the thriving Braginsky state farm. The center of the economy is the village Solnechny. It is not only private houses, but also high-rise buildings, a kindergarten, a school, a large shopping center and a stadium. Everything is new. And then, almost overnight, people lost what they had. State Farm Braginsky was in the exclusion zone. The Kuzmenoks were forced to leave for Rudnya Zhuravlyova, then to Bragin. The history of the resettlement of this family was described by Ales Kryga in the book The Explosion over Prypyats.

The head of the family was the first to arrive in Smorgon, followed by his wife and three children. Only in the autumn of 1990, the Kuzmenoks received an apartment here and began to settle down. The children went to the new secondary school number 5. Father began to work as a director of the fruit and vegetable organization Orientir, mother worked in the district community.

In 1997 the age of 47 the head of the family passed away. Maxim was then 17, his sister 19, and his brother 14 years old.

Trust the Young

After school, Maxim graduated with honors from the Smorgon Polytechnic Professional Lyceum 128. Then he graduated from the Institute of Modern Knowledge named after A. M. Shirokov and received a diploma in economics.  He began to work in RUE Tester. ‘ The enterprise worked on the basis of OMTP, we were engaged in certification of various products: electrical products, doors, agricultural units,’ Maxim Petrovich specifies. ‘ Soon the director Mikhail Iosifovich Shvaydyuk entrusted me, a young guy, with the post of deputy. It was a great responsibility and I realized that I should not let him down, so I did my best. I’ve been working there for three years.

At that time, a young, energetic manager came to the Compound Feed Plant - Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky. One day he invited me to his office to talk. I arrived at the factory in the evening, after seven. There was no one in the office. Alexander Nikolaevich told me about the difficult situation at the plant (the enterprise was unprofitable, had debts). The conversation ended with the words, ‘ If you have some interest let’s work together.’ I was interested in his vision of the future and the confidence that you should not give up, that you can do something. And I agreed, although at the previous place of work I had a stable salary.

At first I got a job here as the head of security, I was interested to know what a company that works around the clock is all about. I wanted to learn all the processes, including the issues of security activities.

Six months later I became a deputy director. When Aleksandr Ostrovsky became the head of the Voronov District Executive Committee, the current chairman of the District Executive Committee, Gennady Horuzhyk, came to us and together we were working from 2008 to 2014.  After that, they entrusted me to manage the company.

Focus on quality

For seventeen years, Maxim Petrovich has been working at the Bakery Plant. ‘ The plant is a big part of my life. It is interesting for me to work here, because the company does not stand still, - smiles our interlocutor. - There were 400 employees – now a thousand (including the Zhodishki branch).

Our plant is a large agricultural holding, multi-vector. We have everything from the production of raw materials and products to its sale. We have developed the trademark Empire of Cereals. By voting we chose a trademark and began to develop it. With cereals, flakes we traveled half the world, our porridges are known far beyond Smorgon. Our products are appreciated because they are natural. We are not afraid to establish distant contacts. What we produce is sold even in China and Kenya, sometimes the cargo gets to the buyer for more than a month, by sea, of course, its price increases, but it is in demand there!

 When I came to the enterprise the task was to reduce people, to remove the cereal workshop. It was not in demand, there were 2 thousand tons of cereals in the warehouse (with the production of 200 tons per month). We did not know where to sell such a huge volume. But only the bad owner destroys, and the good one tries to save. Only one shift began to work in the cereal workshop, people were not reduced, but were distributed throughout the enterprise. They were real professionals, unique. And when the sale of cereals was established, all the workers returned back to the workshop.

The rapeseed shop, which we built in 2011, also justified expectations. Our oil is known throughout Europe, we carefully monitor the quality of raw materials and production technology.’

Finance in one hand, human resources in the other

Maxim Petrovich clarifies that he is not a cabinet worker. He tries to visit the production every day, to communicate with people. ‘  I always say to my employees and at home to my relatives, ‘Do not hide the problem, tell about it immediately, otherwise the tangle can become very confused and it will be extremely difficult to unravel it. You can contact me at any time, do not wait for reception hours, - he says and immediately adds, In one hand you must keep finances, in the second - personnel. No matter how successfully the enterprise works, we must remember about the people. Any financial difficulties can be solved with a good team: reconsider, get sick, rebuild. But if there are no like-minded people, then there is no sense in the work, any good deed can be buried. Therefore, I am very responsible for the choice of our team. I do not manage to talk to everyone personally who gets a job with us as a worker. I talk to middle managers, specialists and students personally. To know and understand how everyone wants to grow and how to help them do it. Professionals need to be raised and supported, then they will give their best to their work.

That's why it pains me when an employee who grew up before our eyes tells us that he has been invited to another company. But I am also happy, we have brought up a specialist!

I position myself as a statesman. I am sure that we must do good not only for ourselves, our enterprise, but also for the country. We should see the future. I want young people, including my children, to live and work in Belarus. It is necessary to give young people a chance, not to repel, to support. If we push it away, someone else will leave the industry, become a bartender, a security guard or an IT specialist. And where are the technologists? Who will work with us? Although I consider myself young. There's still a lot to learn from the aces around me.’

My safe haven called Smorgon

They say a man is happy when he goes to work and returns home with a smile. Who is waiting at home for our conversation partner? His wife’s name is Anna. They have been together for over twenty years. Anna is a servicewoman of the Smorgon border group. Together they bring up two sons. One of them is a student of BNTU, the second is a sixth grader, he studies in the sport class, school number 1.

A few years ago the family settled in the village Klidenyaty. Maxim Petrovich completed the house, which his father began to build. ‘ Only here I regain my strength. I am deeply convinced that the older we get, the more we love this land and strive to work on it. If I am mentally exhausted, it is the earth that gives me a charge of new energy, takes away the negative, - the director smiles. - Though my mother spends more time on the garden, it is her domain, but we also help. We have a garden, a greenhouse, a small plantation of strawberries, and many fruit bushes. Nothing tastes better to me than berries picked from a bush...I do say, products grown with your own hands are the best. But we don't eat everything, we give away more to our neighbors.

Our house is a family hearth, my father built it for a large family, so we try to get together for the holidays. Family is the strongest that a person has, the most important thing. Otherwise, why live for?

Therefore, the medal that I was awarded, I want to devote to my parents. That's the grain they put in me. They brought up in me a hard work and a desire to be useful to people.

But I do not take this award as something personal. This is the merit of my large team, who did not discourage me from working, with whom I managed to go through many difficulties.

… Recently I heard the idea that each person has not one, but at least two homeland. The small homeland where you were born, grew up and the one where I lived a conscious life, where my children grow up.

I had a lot of proposals, I could have gone to Minsk a long time ago. But I decided for myself: it is difficult to find a more comfortable place to live than Smorgon. It's all there. Picturesque nature, wonderful places to relax. No fuss. Smorgon is a small Belarusian paradise. You are calm and know everyone. I've been to a lot of places, I've seen a lot, but I'm always magnetically drawn home to my safe haven called Smorgon.’

Galina ANTONOVA.