Strong growth: bitumen market reached 190 thousand tons

The balance of the Ukrainian bitumen market in August 2021 amounted to 190 thousand tons, which is 24% more than in the same period of the previous year (153.4 thousand tons). This was reported to enkorr in the Consulting group “A-95” with reference to the data of their own research.

The growth of the market was primarily facilitated by an increase in imports, the volume of which amounted to 149.1 thousand tons of road bitumen, which is almost one and a half times more than in August last year (109.3 thousand tons).

The largest volume of the resource was obtained from Belarus – more than 50% in the total structure, which is 75.7 thousand tons. Of this volume, 61.9 thousand tons were supplied by road, the remaining 13.8 thousand tons – by rail.

Poland received 18.4 thousand tons of road bitumen, which is 17% more than in August 2020. By the end of the month, Lithuania accounted for 5.8 thousand tons of the resource.

A-95 noted that the Alliance Energo Trade company continued to increase sea supplies. In particular, 10.7 thousand tons of bitumen were imported from Greece and 6.6 thousand tons – from Italy. Cantarell Ukraine also keeps a high pace, which supplied 12.4 thousand tons of Italian product by tankers, 11.9 thousand tons of Greek and 1.4 thousand tons of Turkmen bitumen.

In addition, last month Cantarell Ukraine delivered the first batches of bitumen produced by the Ryazan Bituminous Materials Plant (Gazprom-Neft). By the end of the month, it imported 3 thousand tons from this direction.

Domestic production of bitumen in August decreased by 6.6%, to 41.3 thousand tons. Thus, the Ukrtatnafta plant produced 41 thousand tons, which is 4.7% less than in August last year. Ukrgasvydobuvannya produced 300 tons of the product, which corresponds to last year’s August.

A-95 noted that for eight months of 2021, the Ukrainian bitumen market amounted to 850 thousand tons, which is 39% more than in January-August last year (610.4 thousand tons).

As a reminder, the volume of bitumen supplies to the Ukrainian market in 2020 amounted to a record 1,188.4 thousand tons, an increase of 84.6% over the year. Production at Ukrainian refineries increased by 50.3% – up to 329.7 thousand tons.Import amounted to 860.2 thousand tons of bitumen, having doubled over the year – by 427.8 thousand tons.

According to forecasts of A-95 experts, taking into account the announced parameters of financing the construction of 4.5 thousand km of roads with a volume of UAH 98 billion, the consumption of bitumen in 2021 may grow to 1.5 million tons.

Source: enkorr