The merger of SIBUR’s and TAIF’s historical assets resulted in an exponential growth of plastics, elastomers and organic synthesis business in terms of absolute volume of production, range and applications of products. The company believes that this offers a great potential for further development. To that end, a decision has been made to divide the Plastics, Elastomers and Organic Synthesis Division into two standalone business units both supervised by Sergey Komyshan, SIBUR’s Management Board member and Executive Director. Member of the Management Board and Managing Director Alexander Petrov will be the Head of the Plastics and Organic Synthesis Division, while Timur Shigabutdinov, another member of the Management Board and Managing Director, will be in charge of the Synthetic Rubbers Division.

 

The Plastics and Organic Synthesis Division will consolidate assets with a total capacity of 3 mtpa. The Division’s further expansion will be driven by the development of medium-tonnage chemicals, which enjoy strong demand in the Russian market. Once implemented, the respective projects will substitute imports of products such as MAN and DOTP and make a strong contribution to the growth of Russia’s non-commodity exports. In addition, the Company plans to use this business to expand the production of feedstock for high-margin products in the specialty chemicals segment, which currently has an insignificant presence in the domestic market.

 

Petrov will also continue to supervise SIBUR’s production support function as it pursues increasingly ambitious goals – integrate procurements within the combined company, keep pace of changes and implement the existing functional initiative portfolio: import substitution, category strategies, optimisation of technical solutions, and use of digital tools.

 

The standalone Synthetic Rubbers Division was established in response to a more than 3-fold increase in the rubber business as a way to focus on delivering operational improvements for rubber production facilities, which today have a total capacity of around 1.2 mtpa. The Division will be responsible for developing new grades with unique consumer properties, creating customer services and offering comprehensive solutions, as well as expanding footprint across segments and geographies. With its unparalleled integrated business model, the combined company will be able to ramp up the efficiency of its rubber business by increasing the availability of feedstock, predominantly butadiene, and develop production of most popular butadiene-based rubbers going forward.