Vasily Nomokonov: President - International of IISRP & Head of SIBUR

Congratulations on taking over as the new President-International of IISRP! What are your plans for the IISRP?

Thank you. As the newly elected President-International I plan to use my experience in advancing the IISRP in the projects and services that it performs for its members. The synthetic rubber industry needs an association such as the IISRP to advance its mission and the projects that benefits the industry as a whole. I plan to lend my expertise to continue to fulfill that mission.

Do you have any special plans for the IISRP's activities during your Presidential year?

The most important role I will have over the next year is to Chair the IISRP Executive Committee and the Board of Directors, not to mention the development of an outstanding speakars program for our Moscow meeting during the week of 12 May 2008. I have already begun working with Jim McGraw, the IISRP Managing Director to develop our theme and the outline of the topics to be covered.

Keeping in mind the increasingly high growth in Asia, can one expect a further intensification of the IISRP's activities in this region?

The IISRP has been aggressively recruiting Asian producers for several years and most of the new IISRP members have been from Asian. I suspect that trend will continue.

With the growing shortage of natural rubber, what is your opinion about the possibilities of increase in synthetic rubber consumption?

As we all know there are cycles in the rubber industry like most other industries. The difference in the rubber industry is that there exists an NR cycle and SR cycle with a number of variables having impact on each other and some of the variables are competitive.

When did Sibur first start production of synthetic rubber service?

Our plant in the city of Voronezh (500 km to the South from Moscow) produced its first polybutadiene in 1932. Later, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the formation of private companies, this plant became a part of Sibur.

Can you elaborate on the position and role of the Synthetic Rubber business in the Sibur Group?

Sibur Group is a home for five businesses, three of them are combined into Sibur Holding, and two – Sibur Russian Tyres and Fertilizers Holding are run as separate entities. Synthetic rubber business unit generates about one third of Sibur Holding revenues and about one fourth of Sibur Group revenues.

Therefore, it is one of the core businesses with a very strong position in the local market and impressive opportunities abroad.

Which synthetic rubbers are manufactured at the six Enterprises which constitute your Synthetic Rubber Business?

Although indeed six plants constitute our SR business unit, some of them manufacture SR in three plants: Togliatti (SBR, Butyl rubber, IR), Voronezh (SBR, PBR, SBS, SSBR, NBR) and Krasnoyarsk (NBR).

What is the total production capacity of each of these enterprises?

Togliatti, Voronezh and Krasnoyarsk plants produce 250,00, 240,000 and 35,000 tons of SR per annum espectively. In addition to it, we may mention 100,000 tons produced for Sibur by other Russian manufacturers on the processing scheme.