Globus-Stal – No.1 service centre for stainless steel in Russia
----Interview with Ekaterina Chekurova Head of purchasing department Globus-Stal Ltd.
“Globus-Stal” is a privately owned company founded in 1997 as a steel trader. Today it is an up-to-date metal service center specialized in processing of a wide range of the stainless steel products. The company is located 25 km south of Moscow and owns more than 25,000 m2 closed space facilities.
Asian Metal: Thank you for taking our interview. Please introduce your company firstly.
Ekaterina: Over the past 15 years, our company has been specializing in slitting and cutting-to-length services, sheet and coil grinding as well as adjustment of thick plates geometry and edge preparation for further welding.
The major milestone in the company development is start of construction of welded stainless steel plant.
The core company business includes supply and further processing of stainless steel coils, plates and strips of 200, 300, 400 series as well as duplex steels.
Continuously revolving stock capacity makes it possible to promptly response to any domestic market inquiry, given the permanently held stock volume of over 10,000 metric tonnes.
At present time our service center renders high quality services on par with the world leading service centers. The company’s philosophy reflects the following key principles: prompt order handling and processing, quality control during all processing stages, quick response to all and any customer's inquiry.
Asian Metal: Where do you buy stainless steel? Do you have any regular suppliers in China?
Ekaterina: Outstanding material quality is the crucial aspect “Globu-Stal” pays special attention to. We purchase stainless steel from all over the world and purchasing process is managed by highly qualified company employees, who select material based on its price and quality. On our stock one can find steel products from China, South Africa, India, Indonesia, Spain, Sweden, Slovenia, Belgium and many other countries. Indeed, for the time being the major part of our purchasing account for Asian region and Asian suppliers like TISCO, BAOSTEEL, LISCO, YUSCO, TSINGSHAN, among the others.
Asian Metal: Do you also sell stainless steel outside Russia?
Ekaterina: "Globus-Stal" continues its constant development and explores new market segments. An immediate challenge for the company is strengthening the company presence in all the market segments, enlargement of the equipment fleet in order to provide the unique services for both domestic and export markets in the nearest future.
Currently Russia is our main sales market, and we can boast of delivering stainless sheets, coils, and tubes to any part of our country. The export share is about 10% with main export markets in Belarus, Kazakhstan and Armenia.
Asian Metal: Can you please introduce current stainless steel market situation in Russia?
Ekaterina: A particular feature of the Russian market is a strong import dependency;quite a large share of material is imported, mainly from the Asian region. Imports of the basic stainless steel products increase annually and have reached particularly 400,000 metric tonnes by the end of 2018.
Unfortunately, domestic consumption rate does not show the same pace compared to imports growth, so from time to time we may see a market imbalance such as excess of supply over demand.
Asian Metal: How about the demand from downstream industries in Russia?
Ekaterina: For the time being,stainless steel processing in Russia shows small but constant annual growth.We witness metal processing companies investing in equipment as the processing share tends to increase.
Asian Metal: Chinese stainless steel prices went up obviously in Q1. Is this a support to prices in Russia?
Ekaterina: The stainless steel prices in Russia depend not only on those in China. They are more dependent on such factors as: the current domestic market situation, the main price trends that is set by the main market players, fluctuation of the foreign exchange market, the purchase price of the metal that is already in storage at the warehouse, and in a much less way Russian prices depend on the current prices of the manufacturers. These factors are the reason why the increase in Chinese stainless steel prices doesn’t instantly boost the prices in Russia, but this increase will certainly be seen as it will determine the future prices.
Asian Metal: Chinese stainless steel export prices are not competitive in the international market. Do you have any suggestions for Chinese steel exporters?
Ekaterina: In our opinion the main problem that Chinese steel exporters face is that they are not flexible in terms of providing the deferred payment terms. Meanwhile China’s main competitors, such as Korea and Japan, are already offering their clients such payment terms as open account or a credit line, which greatly influences the choice of the supplier, especially on such markets as Russia, since the cost of the credit funds is high.
Asian Metal: What is your prediction of Russian stainless steel market this year?
Ekaterina: During the recent years, Russian stainless steel market has been showing the stable growth. Due to that we expect an increase in both stainless steel import rate and in the domestic demand for stainless steel products.
In Russia the main demand for stainless steel comes from large consumers, the majority of them are governmental companies. Consequently the stainless steel demand depends on big infrastructural projects, which are supported by the government.
Asian Metal: Do you have any new plans in 2019?
Ekaterina: As a service centre, “Globus-Stal” has a leading position on the stainless steel market of flat products.
We are the biggest service center for stainless steel products in Russia, having the professional equipment for slitting, cutting to length and grinding of stainless steel coils and sheets. Many of the services that we provide are unique; moreover we are the only company in Russia that can process coils with thicknesses from 4 up to 14mm.
Also we occupy 100% of the market share in grinding of coils with thicknesses from 0.4 up to 3mm and in grinding of plates with thickness up to 50mm.
In our area of the market we have no competitors and most of the companies that work in the same filed are our clients.
Presently we are working on implementation of several major projects.
Firstly, we are building a tube mill which will specialize in production of tubes for food, chemical, construction and oil & gas industries.
Secondly, we are creating a sustainable stock of stainless plates for thicknesses up to 130mm and simultaneously we are installing a plate straightening machine that will straighten plates of up to 40mm thickness. On the Russian market this service will be offered exclusively by our company.
It must be noted that we already can cut plates into a required size with our plasma cutting machine, grind plates of up to 50mm thickness and in a very short time we will be able also to straighten them.
Next, we are developing a separate project – production of decorative surfaces on stainless steel sheets in order to wider introduce such material into the areas of construction and architecture.
Apart from all abovementioned, our company is a permanent participant of many annual exhibitions, such as: Metal-Expo, Neftegaz (National Oil and Gas Forum), Metaloobrabotka (Equipment, Instruments and Tools of Metal working Industry), Aquatherm Moscow, MosBuild etc.
At our facility we regularly host conferences and seminars where all market players can discover our company’s abilities and see the most modern equipment for stainless steel processing with their own eyes. Last year we held a conference which has welcomed more than 100 representatives of both Russian and foreign companies.
