MOSCOW (MRC) -- In 2012, the estimated consumption of high impact polystyrene (HIPS) and general purpose polystyrene (GPPS) in Russia amounted to about 317,000 tonnes of the material, which exceeds the level of consumption in 2011 by 8%, according to MRC ScanPlast.
In December, consumption of HIPS-GPPS decreased slightly to the level of almost 27,000 tonnes due to the reduction of import volumes.
In 2012, the market growth was provided, to a greater extent, by the imported material, the supply of which increased by 27% to around 90,000 tonnes of the material. The share of the imported material in the consumption increased from 24% in 2011 to 28.5% in 2012.
Capacity utilization of Russian producers was at the peak level almost the entire year, except for some cases of outages for maintenance at the plants. As a result, Russian maker produced almost 258,000 tonnes of the material, which makes 72.5% of the total consumption of HIPS-GPPS.
The structure of PS production in Russia has remained the same. Nizhnekamskneftekhim accounts for more than 70% of HIPS-GPPS production, PGProf accounts for 17% of production and Gazprom neftekhim Salavat polystyrene makes 12%.
At the same time, exports of Russian polystyrene dropped to the level of 32,000 tonnes of the material, down 10% year-on-year. It should be noted that this is the bottom level of export shipments over the last 5 years - in 2007, nearly 30,000 tonnes of the material were exported.
MRC