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December 14, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 6
IFRS revenues were up by 21.6% to RUB258bn in the first half of 2018 due to support from prices and the continuous effect of commissioning new capacities, and they clearly will rise again even more strongly as ZapSib comes online.
The domestic Russian market is also one of Sibur’s more interesting ones, accounting for 58% of revenues in 2017. After that comes Europe, but Asia is also growing in importance.
The Chinese state-owned energy company Sinopec and the Chinese Silk Road Fund bought 10% each in the Russian company in 2015 and 2016 respectively. Konov says the sale to Sinopec was proportionally split between the existing shareholders and the company already has several joint ventures with the Chinese – the main one being a synthetic rubber plant in Krasnoyarsk.
“In the Krasnoyarsk rubber plant we are respon- sible for production and they are responsible for marketing,” says Konov, adding that Sibur is the majority shareholder and handles the technol- ogy and production, while their Chinese partners handle the sales and marketing in Asia.
Sibur has a rubber joint venture in India, which
is the opposite in that there Sibur is the minority partner, but again it handles the technology and production with its Indian partners doing the sales and marketing.
As for its own synthetic rubber production, Sibur exports most of its output to Europe where it
has most of the major car tyre producers as customers. While Europe and the former Soviet Union remain the company’s key markets the future is in Asia and the other emerging markets.
“The European market is not growing so it is not difficult to outpace the European market. The Russian market has been growing fast in the last decade because it started from underconsump- tion. We have seen a lot of changes in the con- sumer behaviour in the patterns of how the big retail chains changed their network – from open air markets to retail supermarkets. That has led to significant growth in polymer consumption,” says Konov. “But the Asian markets are grow- ing and continue to grow faster than the average global growth rates.”