MOSCOW (MRC) -- Russia’s leading plastic pipe extruder Polyplastic Group has invested almost EUR1.5m to launch a production unit manufacturing new multi-layer pressure pipes for water, gas distribution and other applications, said Plasticsnewseurope.
This facility was recently inaugurated at the firm’s Klimovsk pipe plant site close to the capital, which employs 900 and produces a range of 10 mm to 3m diameter standard and corrugated polyethylene pipe.
The innovative ‘MULTIPIPE’ brand pressure pipe will be extruded on five new production lines just installed at Polyplastic’s latest plant extension. A workforce of 45 has been recruited for the operation, situated outside the industrial city of Podolsk.
“This workshop, with five modern lines to produce pressure pipes for water and gas supply and high-voltage electrical cables will allow us to manufacture (annually) an additional 20,000 tons of products,” explained Polyplastic Group’s president Lev Gorilovsky.
Klimovsk plant, set up in 2002, already provides work for nearly 900 employees and runs 25 extrusion lines with an annual output of some 60,000 tons of PE pipe on the 50,000m2 site. The new unit brings the site pipe capacity to 80,000 tons per year.
Much of the output from the new multilayer pipe facility is expected to meet the needs of major infrastructure projects in planned development programmes for the surrounding Moscow region.
“This is a truly innovative product – a multi-layer pipe for special applications with non-erasable and non-flammable inner layers,” Gorilovsky commented on the ‘MULTIPIPE’ product.
A number of industrial enterprises are now interested in using such polymer pipes, “since they are 4 – 5 times more durable than other types of pipe”, the Polyplastic group president added.
Last year, the Klimovsk operation, one of Europe’s biggest PE pipe producers, extruded around 50,000 tons of polyethylene into pipes. This represented about one fifth of the total output in Russia, according to Polyplastic.
The group, which also extrudes polypropylene and PVC-U pipe, is not only the country’s biggest plastic pipe manufacturer but also Russia’s leading plastics processor.
MRC