Rybnitsa Reinforced Concrete Products Plant No. 8

Reinforced Concrete Products Plant No. 8 stands abandoned on the industrial fringe of Rybnitsa: a long, low complex of production halls and conveyor structures in reinforced concrete and steel. The plant was one of at least eight numbered reinforced concrete products facilities ("Заводы железобетонных изделий" - without whom the "Concrete" in "Concrete Wastelands wouldn't be possible!) across the Moldovan SSR as part of the republic's construction materials industry network. The system was conceived to supply the prefabricated concrete components suc as panels, slabs, beams, and lintels that the Soviet mass housing programme required at industrial scale. Plants in Chișinău (No. 1, established 1946), Bălți, Tiraspol, Bender and elsewhere formed the chain; Rybnitsa held No. 8. Rybnitsa was the most heavily industrialised city in the Moldovan SSR outside Chișinău. The cement kombinat, established 1961, supplied the entire republic and beyond. Its output went into the Moldavian State Power Plant, the Dubăsari hydroelectric dam, and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear station. The Moldavian Metallurgical Plant followed in 1985, one of three such facilities built in the late Soviet Union, smelting scrap steel for rolled goods. After 1991 the plant passed through owners before ceasing production.