PERCo Brand Guidelines: The 1988 St Petersburg Turnstile Maker With a Plant in Pskov

A late-Soviet start and a first tripod turnstile.

PERCo is a Russian maker of turnstiles, gates, locks and access-control systems, based in St Petersburg. Russian Wikipedia expands the name as the Petersburg Electro-Radio-Technical Company, and says the business was set up in 1988 in what was then Leningrad. The St Petersburg business paper Delovoy Peterburg gave the same founding year in 2010, and the technology news site CNews repeated it in 2019.

The company’s own timeline says it began by developing and making custom-built security systems, and that in 1991 it produced the first Russian-made tripod turnstile, the three-armed type; Russian Wikipedia gives the same year for its first tripod. The timeline then lists an electromechanical lock and a proximity-card access-control system in 1993, card readers in 1995 and rotor turnstiles, the full-height kind, in 1999.

Exports came early, on the company’s account. It says its turnstiles were first installed outside the former Soviet states in 2001, in Reykjavik; that it was selling to Japan, the United Kingdom and France by 2002; that it opened a warehouse in Tallinn in 2005; and that it opened its first showroom abroad, in Glasgow, in 2006. By 2010, Delovoy Peterburg reported, PERCo was selling in 72 countries, including Germany, Italy, Japan, Singapore and Australia. The company now says it sells in 96.

In 2010 the same paper named Aleksandr Krutov as the company’s president and its main investor.

Tripods, rotors, speed gates and software.

PERCo’s catalogue is organised by turnstile type rather than by product family names. Its English-language website groups the range into compact tripod turnstiles, box tripod turnstiles, speed gates, full-height rotor turnstiles and security gates, swing gates and railing systems, and lists locks, boom barriers, access-control controllers and readers, and time-and-attendance systems beside them. It also sells what it calls “IP-stiles”, which its timeline says it began making in 2008.

The company’s dates for newer lines are its own: all-weather stainless-steel turnstiles in 2015, speed gates in 2016, boom barriers in 2020, turnstiles for paid entry in 2022 and parking systems in 2025. Russian Wikipedia records the 2025 move into parking, describing a package of parking posts, pay stations, controllers and entry terminals with its own management software.

Software is a large part of the offer. Russian Wikipedia notes that in 2007 PERCo developed what it calls Russia’s first unified security and management system built on Ethernet, and that in 2013 its S-20 security system was added to the teaching programme of ten universities in Russia and neighbouring states. The company says the number is now twelve. In 2024, Russian Wikipedia adds, it released a new version of its PERCo-Web system for managing access control.

Big sites are where the turnstiles are most visible. CNews reported in 2019 that more than 70 PERCo full-height turnstiles were installed at the port of Jebel Ali in Dubai, and that its equipment had been in use in the Emirates for more than ten years, with buyers also in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman. The company’s timeline says its full-height turnstiles handled fans at the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.

Entrance control as a category.

Entrance control is a quiet corner of the building trade. Its makers sell turnstiles, speed gates, security doors and barriers to the people who plan office lobbies, stations, airports and sports grounds, and they tend to present themselves through installations rather than through logos: a row of glass gates in a tower foyer, a line of fare gates in a metro hall, a car-park barrier at a terminal.

The products fall into a few families. Glass speed gates, which open a pair of panels for each authorised person, are shown in office lobbies; full-height turnstiles, with rotors that reach above head height, are marketed for site perimeters and stadiums; mass-transit gates line metro and rail stations; and revolving security doors and portals are offered for high-risk sites. In 2026 ASSA ABLOY summed up one maker’s range as speed gates, mass transit gates and security revolving doors, which covers most of that spread.

Case studies carry much of the marketing. Gunnebo’s press releases describe speed gates fitted in Shenzhen’s Galaxy Twin Towers in 2023, and Automatic Systems’ own timeline reads as a list of metro networks, from Manila in 1983 to Stockholm in 2007. Public buyers leave a record of their own: in 2023 the Brussels transport operator STIB awarded the maintenance of the access gates in its metro and premetro stations to Automatic Systems, according to an EU contract notice.

The trade meets at security fairs. Security Essen, in Germany, held its 2026 edition and has announced the next for September 2028; Intersec, now called Intersec Global, is held in Dubai under Messe Frankfurt, with its next edition set for January 2027. Ownership is consolidating too: in August 2026 ASSA ABLOY agreed to buy Gunnebo Entrance Control, in a deal expected to close in the fourth quarter of the year.

A plant near the border and an office in the Gulf.

PERCo’s main factory is in Pskov, south-west of St Petersburg. Delovoy Peterburg reported on 2 March 2010 that the plant had been formally opened the day before, after the company bought a two-hectare site in the north of the city in 2007 and began test production in April 2009. The paper put the production floor at about 10,000 square metres and the workforce at about 300, and said the plant made more than 20 models of turnstiles, gates and railings and more than 50 models of controllers, panels and card readers, with technology developed by Russian specialists. It also housed a training centre for installers and service engineers.

The company kept growing at home. In September 2013 Delovoy Peterburg reported that PERCo was starting work on a six-storey, 7,000-square-metre building in St Petersburg for product development, training, a showroom and marketing, and that its production space then totalled 15,000 square metres. The company now gives 23,000 square metres of production and office space and about 500 staff. It says its products are designed by its own research and development division, and lists the machine tools in its plant, from laser cutters to sheet-bending presses, by maker.

Abroad, the company’s base is now Dubai. CNews reported on 9 September 2019 that PERCo was opening its first foreign office there to meet demand in the Middle East, and the company’s English-language website lists a Dubai address as its contact point. Its timeline adds a Dubai warehouse in 2022 and sales in Brunei, Algeria and Ethiopia in 2023.

The company says its quality management system is certified to ISO 9001:2015, with a certificate dated December 2023, and that it gives a five-year warranty on its equipment.

For a design guide, PERCo shows a maker that presents itself through engineering: a catalogue sorted by turnstile type, a timeline of firsts and a factory described machine by machine. Compare Gunnebo and Automatic Systems, two European makers of the same kinds of gates. For this guide we use a deep blue, a cool grey and a brick-red accent with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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