Dear colleagues,

You are about to start reading the Association RusChlor’s performance report for the year 2016.

If in writing the report I had to limit myself to considering only the production output, I would most probably begin with notifying you on the positive fact that there had been registered a little rise in the caustic soda output at most facilities for the reporting period in the Russian Federation. That rise had pushed up the overall output in the caustic soda for the industry as a whole irrespective of even the temporary problems encountered by JSC “Sayanskkhimplast”that had been triggered off there by a temporary cancellation of the ethylene supplies to the facility.

It is also essential that there had also risen the chemical production output in PVC, synthetic hydrochloric acid, solutions of the calcium chloride, bulk sodium hypochlorite, and deicing agents.

What is even more important is that there had risen the production capacity in chlorine for the membrane electrolysis production lines in the Russian Federation for the reporting period.

Speaking of the improvements achieved in the Russian chlor-alkali industry’s ecological performance, one should mention in the first place the reduction in the mercury emission into the air that had been accomplished as a co-result of the implementation of the large-scale modernization project at Volgograd JSC “Kaustik” that had involved modernization of the mercury cathode electrolyzers there. It is also worth noticing in this connection the steady reduction in the mercury content of the solid wastes that has been continuing to go on for rather a long period at Kirovo-Chepetsk LLC “HaloPolymer” as a result of the technological improvements made to the brine conditioning process there.

Of all the industry-wide problems that Association “RusChlor”had been tackling for the reporting period it is worth spotting out the following ones.

RusChlor had been closely cooperating with Federal Service for Ecological, Technological, and Nuclear Supervision of the Russian Federation (ROSTEKHNADZOR) in the field of Regulatory Affairs on working out an acceptable at the very least set of corrections to be introduced into the rules governing the production of chlorine, caustic soda, caustic potash, sodium hypochlorite, and many other hazardous production processes. This can be called a model of the effective cooperation of government and business. In so doing Association “RusChlor” first generalized the suggestions put forward by the industry and ROSTEKHNADZOR in its turn analyzed the RusChlor’s proposals having taken an unbiased balanced attitude based on the objective scientific knowledge. There is a reasonable chance for the RusChlor's proposals to be taken into consideration in composing the two amended codes^*.

The notorious “Best Available Techniques” (BAT) make up not less important line of the RusChlor’s activity. The reality is that almost all the Russian manufacturers of chlorine, caustic soda, and their derivatives have already engaged into the quest for obtaining the so called “integrated environmental permits” (IEP) in the modern regulatory practice based on the BAT paradigm. In order to help the industry, Association “RusChlor” has managed to establish good ties with the governmental agency called “BAT Bureau” working under Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation. We aim at timely development in cooperation with BAT Bureau of the Reference Books on the Best Available Technologies (BREFs), which should be considered by the government a first step in obtaining by the chlor-alkali facilities of the aforementioned IEPs.

Unfortunately, both the industry and RusChlor failed last year to even mitigate the problems faced in transportation of chlorine and other such chemical products over rail.  In particular, all the numerous talks that RusChlor had with such governmental and private organizations as Ministry of Industry and Trade, Ministry of Transportation, Public Joint-Stock Company "Russian Railways", Federal Service for Environmental, Technological, and Nuclear Supervision, and a few machine building companies have only made it absolutely clear that such a new railcar designed for bulk transportation of chlorine that allegedly satisfies all the current technical regulations can only be developed not earlier than by the year 2020. This is why Association “RusChlor” while not giving up its efforts aimed at creation of a new generation railway tank-car has begun to investigate the existing practice of bulk transportation of liquid chlorine over rail in tank-containers.

In the course of its international activities RusChlor participated last year in all the events held by World Chlorine Council which we have been a full member in for a few years.

Well, I guess that is quite enough for a preface. If any of the RusChlor’s works mentioned above has attracted your interest, you can read about it in greater detail in the report itself.

It looks worth underlining the following point as a bottomline though.

The experience that we gathered last year has proved once again that it is the active participation of the industry specialists in the RusChlor’s various activities including our efforts to tackle all the unexpectedly popping up problems that makes it possible not only to find out the sought technical solution of such a problem so that it should be both wise and effective but timely protect the whole industry’s vital interests as well.

Sincerely yours,

Executive Director, Association "RusChlor"

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