Dear colleagues,

You are going to begin reading the Association “RusChlor” performance report summing up its achievements and setbacks over the past year and this year’s first quarter.

Let’s start from brushing up a few suggestive macroeconomic facts and numbers. The Russian Chlor-akali industry’s facilities had been steadily functioning at the capacity utilization rate's averaging out at above the level of 90% for the reporting period in the first place.

As is easily seen from the data reported the overall caustic soda production has even risen by 4.25 percent.

The commodity chlorine output amounted to only 69,098 metric tons last year though, which falls short of the previous year’s analogous parameter by 25%

The annual output of PVC has amounted to more than 990 000 metric tons of the product for the year 2019, which exceeds the analogous parameter of the previous year 2018 by more than 4.2%.

It is particularly worth mentioning the following all-industry problems out of all those tackled by Association “RusChlor” last year:

Specialists of the Association ‘RusChlor” actively participated in the reference period in the efforts aimed to radically overhaul the whole system of technical regulation in the Russian Federation under the newest paradigm of the so called “Regulatory Guillotine”. All the facilities of the chlor-alkali industry and especially those representing either the producers of chlorine, its derivatives, production equipment or the engineering companies take a special interest in that as a result of the ongoing aforesaid reform neither Federal Law "On the Industrial Safety" nor the Federal Regulations that are supposed to function under it should not constrain to any considerable extent the use by the industry of the modern day’s either technologies or equipment. It follows then that pursuant to the industry’s aforesaid interest RusChlor should have taken any possible measures in embedding into the new legal-and-normative documents the so called “target-setting principles” so that any particular engineering decision should be afterwards stipulated in the documents more broadly, if such a thintg ever comes into there, which means that if one time in the future a necessity arises in development of any methodic or technical recommendations, that could be easily and quickly accomplished. All in all, if the aforesaid aim were achieved by RusChlor, it would make it possible for the industry’s both manufacturing and engineering companies to much more broadly rely on the equipment either traditional or newly developed without necessity to either adapt continuously the existing National Standards or develop the highly special Safety Assessment Reports every time when the engineering decisions does not comly with the said National Standards, the latter involving among other things rather costly Expert Examinations.

In achieving the aforesaid aim Association “RusChlor” has already managed with the assistance of Russian Chemists Union to maneuver a few RusChlor specialists as experts into the membership of the Working Group at the Government of the Russian Federation on the reform being considered. RusChlor has also fulfilled rather a formidable work on formulation of the new industrial safety requirements to be presumably introduced into the draft texts of both Federal Law “On Industrial Safety” and all the relevant subordinate legislation being developed by the Working Group in cooperation with the people of main Russian Regulator Federal Service for Ecological, Technological, and Nuclear Supervision of the Russian Federation (ROSTEKHNADZOR).

In so doing RusChlor put most attention on the development of a new version of the National Standards and Safety Rules to be observed in handling chlorine. The work involved among other things a thorough analysis of more than a hundred of comments, suggestions, and criticisms made by the RusChlor member-companies as well as by other key-stake holders and third parties, which was followed by a further discussion of the results with the ROSTEKHNADZOR experts. Based on the design considerations developed by RusChlor experts the cooperative work has resulted in inclusion of our suggestions into the new draft version of “Rules for the Safe Production, Storage, Transportation, and Use of Chlorine”.  In addition to making corrections to the fundamental pieces of legislation the draft document being considered introduces essential changes into the requirements supposed to be imposed on the processes of both the manufacture and use of both the sodium and potassium hypochlorite irrespective of the hypochlorite being the chemical or electrolytic one so that the changes should come into the Rules as a separate chapter.

I do hope though that the general concept of the document being considered will not be changed in its essence as a result of the incoming readings of it by ROSTEKHNADZOR so that the document would be approved and officially registered at Ministry of Justice in this year's last quarter .

All the problems linked to the transportation of the bulk transportation of the liquid chlorine with both the railcars or tank-coё+ntainers over rail are still acute. This is why the RusChlor specialists have participated in the reporting period in finalizing both both the tank-container construction design and the liquid chlorine loading/ unloading technology to be applied in regard to the tank-container. The good news is though here that as of now the trial run of the tank-containers has already upheld the possibility of a safe transportation of the liquid chlorine over rail with the use of such a kind of the movable tare.

 It is also noticing in this connection that in composing a new version of the “Rules for the Safe Production, Storage, Transportation, and Use of Chlorine” based on the suggestions made by the industry RusChlor has made a few corrections to the requirements on the railcar and tank-container construction design.

RusChlor sees as one of its key tasks the informational support of the member-companies in regard to the modern both equipment and technologies available for implementation. This is exactly the mission of the traditional RusChlor-held annual International Scientific-and-Technological Conference that is used to being attended by all the Russian producers of chlorine and its derivatives and most prominent engineering companies both domestic and foreign as well as most prominent manufacturers of the modern equipment.

In so doing there was held in Moscow the Thirteenth International Scientific-and-Technological Conference “Chlorine and its Derivatives 2019” in the last year’s April. The Conference has been attended by the representatives of some 76 organizations. A somewhat more detailed information on the Conference can be found in the full text of the performance report in Russian. There is also given in that full text in Russian the information on the other important fora that were attended by Association “RusChlor”.

 The most important one of the aforementioned fora is obviously made up by the annual meeting of World Chlorine Council a member of which RusChlor has been since 2005. The last in the row of that meetings was held on October 08 through 10, 2019 in Tokyo, Japan.  It is worth noticing in this connection that this report also provides its reader with the information on the event including a description of the visit that was made by a group of the participants in the meeting to the industrialized cite operated by Corporate group “AGC”

This report has been issued somewhat late comparing to the usual timeline assigned for such periodicals. The point is that in the end of the reporting period the pandemic had come. It is easily understandable that as well as all the other constituencies of the everybody’s life the RusChlor international activities had to change in adaptation to the impact made by the said existential event. We do cherish a hope though that the pandemic would not deliver a catastrophic blow to that activities. Nevertheless, RusChlor has already decided to reschedule its incoming International Conference to start in either late this or early next year.

Sincerely yours,

Executive Director, Association "RusChlor"

Boris Yagud

L I S T   O F   C O N T E N T S

The full version of the report is only available to the members in RusChlor and only in Russian as it has been published in the restricted area of the RusChlor’s web-Site in only Russian so as to be accessible by only the duly registered users