UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 23, 2015. Head of ChTPZ Group’s Marketing Division Sergey Aleschenko and Director-General of Uraltrubostal ChTPZ Warehouse Roman Zelenin took part in the Russian Union of Metal Suppliers Congress in Yalta, the company’s press service reports.

The two executives spoke about the Group’s current share of the Russian steel pipes market and discussed the metal goods market trends with representatives of other metallurgical enterprises.

‘In 2014, both Russian and foreign pipe manufacturers sold 10.7m tons of their produce on the Russian market. ChTPZ Group’s share was 3% bigger than in 2013, reaching about 18%. The increase was mainly due to the company completing its investment projects in time and benefiting from the dropping imports on the domestic market,’ Aleschenko said.

Since the demand for pipes in the housing services sector and the building industry is going down as the number of smaller enterprises which make small-diameter pipes is going up, competition is getting fiercer and the market is transforming into a strictly local one.

‘Metal traders still tend to consolidate into larger bodies. We could expect bigger players to operate on the market by 2020; these bigger players will likely focus on specific product types such as large-diameter pipes, weldless hot-rolled pipes, cold-deformed pipes, and so on. Competition will be even more keenly felt in the meantime,’ said Roman Zelenin.