SABIC invests in Eastern Europe with expanded Moscow sale...

SABIC invests in Eastern Europe with expanded Moscow sales office and dedicated team to support regional customers

At the Interplastica 2009 show, the SABIC family of plastics businesses, including SABIC Innovative Plastics and SABIC Europe, is demonstrating its strong commitment to serving the Eastern European market by introducing its expanded and dedicated sales team, all based in a new SABIC sales office in Moscow. SABIC Innovative Plastics, in the region for over a year, together with the new resources of the SABIC Europe team can now offer customers regional expertise with a broad understanding of their unique needs. The activities of the new sales office will extend across the CIS states as well as the Baltic States.

Geert Drummen heads the SABIC Eastern Europe team, and SABIC Innovative Plastics will continue to be lead by Juri Bercovitz. The teams will focus on providing material solutions for key market sectors including: automotive, building and construction, electrical and lighting, packaging, pipe and infrastructure and linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) film. SABIC, which is exhibiting at Interplastica for the second consecutive year, will showcase a broad array of high-performance materials targeting these sectors at Stand B08/C09, Hall 8.

“SABIC Eastern Europe is ready for business,” said Hubert Guth, SABIC Europe’s Director Sales Offices. “Having a dedicated sales organization will allow us to improve services to customers and ensure efficient processes. We have great products and an experienced team ready to begin work with customers throughout the dynamic Eastern European region. We look forward to helping customers effectively compete in the global environment with a comprehensive product portfolio, with smooth and flexible transaction processes but also with, application development and processing optimization.”

Juri Bercovitz, Regional Manager Eastern Europe, SABIC Innovative Plastics, echo’s the comments of Guth, “In the last two years we proved to be a reliable and committed world class supplier for engineering plastics in Russia and CIS. Our market share and customer base is growing rapidly, and with SABIC Europe’s additional local resources, our depth of expertise in this region is a great value for our customers.”

Eastern Europe is a globally important emerging market with an annual GDP of 6 percent. The areas of focus for SABIC’s plastic businesses are showing strong demand for materials solutions. According to Geert Drummen, there are interesting opportunities for high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and polypropylene (PP) in the pipe sector, as well as for LLDPE for film applications.

In 2007, SABIC Innovative Plastics launched its new Russian Automotive division to accelerate market and application development activities for the rapidly expanding automotive industry in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent Sates (CIS). “We want to be a strong player in this segment,” says Bercovitz, “Ernst and Young reports that despite adverse global financial market developments, Russia’s economy grew by 8.1% in 2007 and the Russian passenger car market grew by 36%, with more than 2.4 million vehicles sold. Drummen adds, “More than 10 global automotive players plan to establish manufacturing facilities in Russia, and as a result car production in Russia is expected to increase by 45% over the next four years, growing from approximately 2.1 million to 3.1 million units. In sales terms, Russia already holds the sixth position in the passenger car market globally and is third in Europe.” ...

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