25 Jan 2023 11:13

Russia reduces imports of base polymers, finished plastic products by 17% and 35% in 2022 - expert

MOSCOW. Jan 25 (Interfax) - Russia imported about 925,000 tonnes of base polymers in 2022, 17.2% less than in 2021, the president of the Association of Plastic Processors (APP), Mikhail Katsevman said at the Ruplastica forum.

"Well, and of course we continued to import products. Not as much as before, [...] but also a fair amount, because in the first quarter products continued to also come in from 48 countries that we now call unfriendly," Katsevman said.

Imports of finished products totaled about 950,000 tonnes in 2022, he said. This was down by 35% from the 1.46 million tonnes that, according to his presentation, Russia imported in 2021.

He attributed the drop to sanctions and the reduced presence of foreign companies in a number of sectors.

Domestic production of base polymers slumped 3.3% to 7.7 million tonnes, and exports fell 10.7% to 3.09 million tonnes, Katsevman estimated.

"One can confidently say that about 6.2 million tonnes of polymer materials were processed in Russia [including 700,000 tonnes of secondary resources and imports]. However, while the average hospital temperature was not that bad, certain polymers were hit fairly hard. Polypropylene, polystyrene and polycarbonate were hit. But while polycarbonate is, after all, more construction, for polystyrene and polypropylene we need to say a 'big thank you' to environmentalists, who did everything they could so that we would stop processing these products, and 'thank you' in big quotation marks to those foreign companies - Renault, Nissan - that left our market and took demand with them," Katsevman said.