SIBUR is Russia's largest petrochemical holding company, with several production facilities in Nizhny Novgorod Region. Its main sites are concentrated in Kstovo and Dzerzhinsk and form a closed chain of petrochemical processing stages.[1]

History of the Nizhny Novgorod enterprises

The history of the Kstovo site goes back to 1951, when construction began in the floodplain of the Kudma River, next to the village of Staroye Kstovo, on the Novogorkovsky oil refinery (NGPZ) and the new town of Kstovo. Within a few years, extensive infrastructure was built on the marshy site: a construction base, woodworking and brick plants, railway and road links, oil-loading trestles, a river port, a bridge across the Kudma River, power facilities, and a heating plant. At the same time, the Novogorkovskaya combined heat and power plant and the Almetyevsk–Gorky oil pipeline, roughly 600 kilometers long, were being built. The first trainload of finished products left the plant in August 1958.[1]

In the 1970s and 1980s the site grew extensively: housing and social infrastructure were built, including houses of culture, schools, hospitals, and kindergartens. In the 1990s the production association Gorkiynefteorgsintez was split into two independent enterprises: the oil refinery, which later became part of LUKOIL-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez, and the petrochemical plant SIBUR-Kstovo.[1]

Construction of the Kstovo Petrochemical Plant began in the 1970s, and it was commissioned in 1981. Since 1999 the enterprise has been part of SIBUR.[1]

The production chain in the region

SIBUR-Kstovo is the first link in the company's petrochemical chain in Nizhny Novgorod Region: it produces ethylene, propylene, and benzene, the primary products used to make polymers, films, and plastic. A significant share of its output is exported, but most of the ethylene is sent by pipeline to two neighboring plants: RusVinyl in Kstovo and SIBUR-Neftekhim in Dzerzhinsk.[1]

RusVinyl, a joint venture between SIBUR and the European company Solvay, produces polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and caustic soda. SIBUR-Neftekhim uses ethylene to produce ethylene oxide and ethylene glycols, which serve as a base for technical fluids, cosmetics, and detergents.[1]

The SIBUR-Kstovo production complex covers several square kilometers. The technological process — high-temperature pyrolysis furnaces, gas separation columns, and storage tanks — is managed from a single control room with more than 100 computers, linked into an automated process control system (APCS). The system is supplemented by digital add-ons that take technological and economic parameters into account in real time.[1]

Role in the life of the region

Kstovsky District, where the holding's key enterprises are concentrated, is the center of the petrochemical industry in the Volga Federal District. According to 2018 data, the industrial sector accounted for 97.7% of the district's material production structure, and SIBUR is one of the flagship enterprises in this sector.[1]

In the area of social investment, the holding runs the "Formula of Good Deeds" program: in particular, in March 2021, with SIBUR's support, the Winter Fest winter sports festival was held in Dzerzhinsk.[1] The educational programs of the Federal Technopark of Vocational Education in Nizhny Novgorod, opened in 2026, were developed with the participation of SIBUR, among others.[1]

Links

Sources

  1. nn.plus.rbc.ru — SIBUR and its role in the development of Nizhny Novgorod Region
Materials from articles used (2)

Alexander Guskov, Opening of the Federal Technopark of Vocational Education in Nizhny Novgorod (2026)