October 24, 2012. In the nine months of 2012, TMK (Pipe Metallurgical Company) raised the volume of its weldless pipe shipments by 3.8%, so that the figure came to 1,860,000 tons. The volume of welded pipe shipments dropped by 8.3% so that the figure came to 1,286,000 tons: this had to do with a decreased demand from the Russian customers for large-diameter pipes in the nine months of 2012. At the same time, the shipments volume in the third quarter of the year increased by 3.6% on the previous quarter, TMK’s press service reports.

The volume of OCTG shipments was 11% greater than a year earlier, while the quarter-on-quarter shipments decreased by 10.8%. The volume of premium threaded joints shipments went up to 467,000 units, which is 40.2% more than in January-September 2011.

According to the company’s estimates, pipe consumption dropped by 16.7% in January-September 2012 compared with a year earlier. At the same time, TMK’s Russia-based assets’ sales were better than the market’s average, so the shipments only declined by 5.7%, down to 2,196,000 tons. This has meant that the company was able to build up on its share of the market: TMK’s share of domestic market shipments rose to 24.7% against 24% in January-September 2011. The decrease in shipments mainly had to do with the still declining demand for LDPs and industrial weldless pipes. When compared with the second quarter of 2012, the total shipments volume went up by 3% and up to 745,000 tons in the third quarter of the year.

The volume of LDP shipments went down by 36% on the nine months of 2011. In the second quarter of 2012, LDP shipments declined by 4.2%.