From the magazine Soviet Philatelist for 1926.
In 1916, the Consumers’ Society of employees and workers at the Aleksandrovsky South Russian Plant of the Bryansk Joint-Stock Company (BOP) issued scrip for internal circulation. Since this scrip was not intended to be used for settlement transactions, no year was printed on it, and the heading bears the title “counter-mark.” Scrip was issued in the following denominations: 1 kopeck, 2 kopecks, 3 kopecks, 10 kopecks, 20 kopecks, 50 kopecks, 1 ruble, 3 rubles, and 5 rubles. It is very difficult to determine the exact total issue today. Approximately, it was issued in the amount of 60,000 rubles. Now, even in Yekaterinoslav it is hard to find this scrip.
All the scrip was printed in black type on a colored guilloche background, different for each denomination. The background has a complex pattern, which makes counterfeiting extremely difficult. The scrip was issued eight to a sheet; therefore pieces are encountered with perforations on two or on four sides. On the reverse of each piece, in the form of an inverted acceptance stamp, the rules of use are printed. Soon after this issue, the counter-marks lost the character of internal circulation for obtaining goods and instead began to circulate among the workers of the Bryansk and Pipe Plants and the population of the settlements adjacent to the plants (Chechelevka, Kaidaki) as monetary substitutes.
The Bryansk Plant Society had been planning the construction of a metallurgical plant in the Yekaterinoslav Governorate as early as 1884. To carry out the plan, in 1885 it began buying up land from local companies and the Yekaterinoslav City Administration. The last transaction was completed in 1887; the site of the future plant totaled 180 desyatinas of land. The plot was located not far from Yekaterinoslav station and the Kaidak branch line of the Catherine Railway, near the settlement of Novye Kaidaki. The construction process itself began in late 1885. In the spring of 1886, the first two blast furnaces were built, with a capacity of 100 tons of pig iron per day. All metal parts for the blast furnaces, as well as the machinery with boilers, were at that time manufactured at the plant in Bezhitsa and shipped by rafting on logs and barges along the Desna and Dnieper rivers to Yekaterinoslav. On May 10 (22), 1887, the plant was solemnly consecrated in the presence of all local authorities, and on the same day the highest permission was received to name the plant “Aleksandrovsky.”
By the beginning of World War I, the Aleksandrovsky South Russian Plant in Yekaterinoslav had become one of the most expensive industrial enterprises in Russia.