UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 19, 2016. ChTPZ Group’s pipe-manufacturing plants – Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant and Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant — supplied 2,019,000,000 kg of pipes to customers last year, which was 3% less than in 2014.

According to the company press service, this slight decrease in sales was related to their key customer Transneft completing its large pipeline-building projects, their CIS-based customers putting off some of their pipeline-building projects, and the overall drop in the industrial, energy, and building markets’ demand for pipes.

The Group sold 4% more weldless pipes (1,081,000,000 kg) to customers in 2015 than in 2014, including 399,000,000 kg of OCTGs (of which 8,200,000 kg were made with Premium threads). The increase in OCTG output was 49% on a year earlier, mainly thanks to freshly upgraded and retooled facilities and increased demand from Russian companies bent on import substitution.

ChTPZ Group supplied 938,000,000 kg of electric-welded pipes to customers in the course of 2015, which was 11% less than in 2014; for one, the sales of large-diameter pipes declined by 13%, down to 883,000,000 kg. This was because Transneft finished its Kuyumba-Taishet and Zapolyarye-Purpe pipelines and postponed the construction of Central Asia-China and Malai-Bagtayarlyk ones.