Sibur's rubber business makes strong gains

Crain News Service report

MOSCOW (Oct. 5, 2015) — Sibur's synthetic rubber (SR) business has turned in a strong performance for the six months ending June 30, parent company OAO Sibur Holding said in its financial statement on Sept. 28.

Sales volumes of SR increased by 19.2 percent to 212.5 kilotons, the Russian group said. Production volumes increased 20.4 percent to 221,405 tons, as Sibur raised output of both commodity rubbers, specialty rubbers and thermoplastic elastomers.

Revenue from sales of synthetic rubbers increased by 29.2 percent on higher capacity load. This, it said, was due to improved economics on the Russian rouble depreciation and lower feedstock prices, as well as completion of product homologation with key clients.

Indeed, business increased across most of the group's petrochemical units: sales volumes of plastics and organic synthesis products increased by 27.2 percent to 472.6 kilotons. Sales volumes of basic polymers increased by 23.3 percent to 375.5 kilotons.

Sales volumes of intermediates and other petrochemical products increased by 58.5 percent to 281.1 thousand tons, inter alia due to higher revenue from sales of ethylene following initiation of ethylene supplies to RusVinyl.

For the gas processing and petrochemicals group as a whole, revenue increased by 5.6 percent to $2.76 billion in the first half of 2015, while earnings increased 30.6 percent to $980 million.

“In the first half of 2015, Sibur delivered strong financial results despite the challenging environment, which proves the strategy of building a vertically integrated company right,” Sibur CEO Dmitry Konov said in a statement. “Starting from the second quarter of 2014, our feedstock & energy business have been affected by the collapsed pricing for the majority of energy products on the back of lower oil prices.

“At the same time, the expansion of our petrochemical business helped to partly mitigate the downward profitability trend in our feedstock & energy segment.”

This report appeared in European Rubber Journal, a United Kingdom-based sister publication of Tire Business.