UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 13, 2018. ChTPZ Group’s member enterprises supplied 1.988m tons of pipes to their customers last year, which exceeded the figures for a year earlier by 16%, or 275,000 tons, the company press service reports.

The Group’s share of the Russian pipe manufacturers’ sales market reached 17.5% in 2017 (up 1% on a year earlier). The increase was brought about by expanding sales of weld-less pipes to O&G companies and to customers in the building and machine-building sectors.

‘The Group sold 19% more weld-less pipes last year than in the year 2016 (around 1.2m tons altogether). This was actually better than in the Soviet times. This improvement was mainly due to the oil and gas companies doing more drilling jobs and therefore needing more OCTGs. Also, the industrial sector’s recovery resulted in increased demand for industrial pipes. We sold some 800,000 tons of welded pipes last year (including 762,000 tons of large-diameter pipes), which was 18% better than in 2016,’ the press service says.

ChTPZ Group’s order book grew more diversified last year, which meant the company exported more to the international market. 587,000 tons of pipes got exported last year (up 123% on a year earlier), including 437,000 tons of pipes exported outside of the CIS (+264%) and 150,000 tons exported within the CIS (+5%). Domestic sales declined by 3% and amounted to 1.4m tons. This was because of the dropping demand for large-diameter pipes after the national oil and gas companies had completed their pipeline development projects. Still, the Group contributed to such major projects as Nord Stream 2, the Power of Siberia, North-European Gas Pipeline, and Yamal SPG.