Russia offers excellent opportunities for the plastic industry and considerable potential for growth.The areas were we see the greatest improvement for 2012 and best growth for the plastic industry is in the packaging industry and medical technology industry; there are also big opportunities in the construction and infrastructure industry for the plastic’s industry. There is a hugh backlog of projects in Russia and with Russia winning the World Cup for 2018 this is only adding to the amount of construction and infrastructure projects taking place with in Russia. The consumer goods sector in Russia is also a big user of plastics.
Traditionally the driving force in Russian plastic demand has been the Food Industry followed by packaging, construction and consumer goods/retail. To meets its local demands Russian companies and factories are rapidly increasing production capacities and are expanding and modernized there manufacturing processes across Russia to meet Russia’s needs. The expansion of the auto industry in Russia and in particular the production of cars will also greatly increase Russia’s opportunities for the world wide plastic industry.
Even with the growth and potential in the packaging industry, medical technology industry, construction and infrastructure Industry and the consumer goods sector its still in the food industry that will be the number one user of plastics in Russia.
The food industries biggest use of plastic’s are in polymer films, bags and other packaging, as Russia is quite under development in its food retail and supermarket sector Russians still tend to buy from markets and traditional corner shops so therefore the food package requirements have not changed much in the recent years. In the construction industry with the large funding from the government as well as from private companies there is large demand for plastic’s for the manufacture of windows, doors, insulation, tubes, pipes sheets and so on.
In Russia over 7 million tonnes of plastic will be consumed by the Plastic converting industry for 2012 which represents a growth of 12% from 2011 and represents 8% of the overall European primary plastics used. On average the per capita consumption of plastic with in Russia is about half of that used with in Western Europe.
In the past a lot of packaging in Russia has come from abroad but with in investment a higher percentage of packaging is produced locally now then imported, production in local sites has become more important. There has been a boom in the amount of international food manufactures who now manufacturer locally in Russia and they require modern packaging. There are about 2,400 Russian companies currently engaged in plastic processing and they are now rapidly modernizing there existing stock of plastics machinery which is offend out of date.
Over 50% of injection molding machines in Russia will need replacing with in the next 2 to 3 years. As Russian companies lack the knowledge and know how to be able to manufacture modern plastic machinery then it means that the majority of the technology will need to be imported so there are still huge opportunities for companies to fulfill this demand in Russia. It’s estimated that the value of exports of injection molding machines to Russia to have been 120.3 million euro in 2011.
