SIBUR is building a Center for Piloting Basic Polymer Technologies in Tobolsk, the launch of which will reduce the time to bring new products to market by up to 10 times. Accelerating these developments is essential for strengthening the country’s technological independence and the sustainability of industries.
The new center will be embedded in the vertical R&D infrastructure of SIBUR Innovations and will become an important link in the process of scaling new products and specialty components from the laboratory stage to industrial production. The hardware configuration of the project provides the ability to test more than 90% of the range of existing and promising basic polymer production technologies, making it unparalleled in the world. The budget for the project exceeds 6 billion rubles, according to the press release.
The company’s developments in the field of production of catalysts — special components for polymer production — including chromium, titanium-magnesium and metallocene ones, will also be tested here. In the future, the piloting center will open up additional opportunities not only for the development but also for licensing of these technologies.
“Previously, all laboratory developments were delivered for testing directly to production, but now we will be able to test them in a separate center without taking the company’s main production facilities out of industrial modes for this purpose. Taking into account that at least 5 catalysts will be tested annually in Tobolsk and about 10 new polymer grades will be launched, the positive effect for the processing industries can be measured in hundreds of thousands of additional tons of modern synthetic materials” — commented Daria Borisova, Member of the Management Board, Managing Director for Development and Innovations of SIBUR.
The design capacity of the center will be up to 300 tons per year. The infrastructure of the center is unique in that it will allow testing a wide range of polyethylene and polypropylene grades, the annual output of which in Russia is 5.3 million tons, with the potential to grow to 6 million tons per year in 2028, and to do so in different modes and configurations.
The Center will bring together specialists with deep industrial and scientific expertise (including those with scientific degrees). Their experience, synergy with Zapsibneftekhim, SIBUR’s largest production site, and cooperation with leading partner companies from Russia and neighboring countries will enable them to solve the most complex technological and engineering problems. At the moment, installation of the main process equipment has been completed at the site, more than 75% of which is Russian-made (St. Petersburg, Moscow Region, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Perm, Tambov). The construction is scheduled to be completed by the end of September, followed by commissioning and comprehensive testing with the receipt of test products at the end of this year.
“Polyethylene and polypropylene are the most demanded polymers in the country’s economy; they are critical for construction, machine building, consumer goods and other industries. Technological independence for these materials is one of the strategic goals, and the creation of the technology piloting center will help accelerate its achievement, as well as the creation of new materials, will contribute to import substitution and growth of export potential” — commented Mikhail Yurin, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation.
SIBUR is implementing a series of projects aimed at making the country 100% self-sufficient in specialty components, the guaranteed availability of which will determine the production of up to 15 million tons of advanced synthetic materials annually by 2030. The Piloting Center will be one of the links in this chain, along with the Center for Research and Technology Scaling, which is planned to be opened in Kazan by 2027, and a catalyst factory, the creation of which is being considered in Tatarstan.