Events

Conference: Russia's industrial salt market

Date: May 24, 2019

The international conference «Russia’s Industrial Salt Market 2019» has successfully concluded its work.

The conference was held on May 24, 2019 at the InterContinental Moscow Tverskaya.

The inaugural international conference gathered industrial salt manufacturers, Russian government officials, rolling stock operators, experts and analysts of the industrial salt market.

Kerry Satterthwaite, manager for industrial minerals and chemicals at Roskill, gave an overview of the global market trends between 2019 and 2028 and provided an analysis of the industrial salt trade flows from Australia, India, China, USA, Japan, South Korea and Russia. Ms Satterthwaite pointed out that salt trade had set a record in 2018 due to lower freight rates. «Unfortunately, a number of international partners impose trade restrictions on Russia,» said Kerry.

Khaled Omira, production and quality manager at SIWA SALT (Egypt), built on the topic of international cooperation. He showed samples of industrial and food-grade salt, used in over 14,000 industries. Mr Omira pointed stressed that the government of Egypt displayed a keen interest in cooperation with Russia.

Aleksander Matros, deputy director general of BSK (Baltic Construction Company, Russia), supported the use of imported salts. His presentation highlighted the competitive advantages of the salt made in Turkey and provided examples of successful products made with it, citing the road construction sector as the primary consumer.

Anna Klimentova, chief of staff at the Russian Association of Winter Road Maintenance, made a presentation about the use of industrial salt for gritting on federal roads, benchmarking the use of sand and salt for de-icing. Ms Klimentova also overviewed the results of tests of the next-gen «Anti Ice» de-icing agent.

Yuri Mamulat, manager of the «De-Icing Chemical Production» project at HaloPolymer, told the delegates about the industrial salt-based de-icing agents. «De-icing agents work like thermal drills, when its granules enter into a reaction by absorbing moisture from the ambient air and emitting heat that thaws ice,» said Mamulat.

Presentations on optimising logistic flows and rail shipments elicited strong reactions. The "salt community» was unanimous in its dissatisfaction with big bags. «Put forward an alternative before banning anything! Big bags are disastrous for our production. Spilling of granular salt during transportation destroys the polypropylene particles, which causes malfunctions in our expensive equipment,» complained to the representatives of the Russian Railways Irina Murzukova, head of strategic materials procurement at RusVinyl.

Anatoliy Kuzhel, deputy head of the Central Directorate of Traffic Management at Russian Railways, took a number of questions on industrial salt transportation.

Among other speakers were Elena Matveeva, head of chemical products and inert materials procurement at Lukoil West Siberia, and Andrey Maslov, CEO of Gorkiy Railroad Logistic Company.

The conference participants proposed introducing a case-by-case approach to low-margin commodities, including industrial salt, and Federal Antimonopoly Service tariff management for non-public railway lines on the books of Russian Railways.

Special thanks are due to the speakers, facilitators and discussants.

Your ideas and suggestions about the next conference’s agenda are very welcome at +7.495.745.07.40 or info@maxconf.ru