Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant (ChTPZ) together with Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant (PNTZ) from Russia’s Sverdlovsk region, shipped 1.89m tonnes of pipe to customers in 2007, a rise of 10% on the previous year’s combined shipments of 1.72m t.

The two companies form the ChTPZ Group, whose sales were split 1.05m t to ChTPZ, up 9% compared to 2006, while at PNTZ an annual rise of 11% took sales to 845,600t.

ChTPz’s sales of large diameter pipe grew 16% last year to 593,000t, from 511,600t in 2006. The group tells Steel Business Briefing that the improvement is the result of participating in the new East Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline, plus other tubing and seamless linepipe business with its regular customers Gazprom, Transneft and the vertically-integrated oil companies.

However, at 75,300t, monthly sales for December 2007 were down 7% at ChTPZ, compared to December 2006. Last month’s production at PNTZ was stable at 61,000t in the same y-o-y comparison.

As of 15 January, group sales director Pavel Pelyugin has been appointed general director of the ChTPZ Group. The former boss, Vitaly Sadykov has stepped down because his five-year contract had run its term, the company says.

Since taking the helm in 2002, Sadykov has successfully integrated PNTZ into the ChTPZ Group, put in place a single management structure, and drawn up its development strategy to 2012, adds the group. The latter will mean investing at least $1.5bn (€1bn) in production and service centre operations, which includes building a large diameter pipe mill at Chelyabinsk, due on stream in 2009.

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