OREANDA-NEWS. "Nizhnekamskshina" (it is a part of the tire complex "Tatneft") in 2015 will produce 10.6 million passenger and light truck radial tires, which is more by 19.1% than the last year, said the executive director of company, Radium Burganov. The actual production of "Nizhnekamskshina" in 2014 was 8.9 million tires, including passenger tires - 7.6 million units and the rest – tires for light vehicles, write the newspaper "Vedomosti".

"Nizhnekamskshina" produces tires of brands Kama, Kama Euro, Viatti. According to the company, its enterprises made every third Russian tire, in 2014 the General distributor of "Nizhnekamskshina", the trading house "Kama" sold Viatti tires more by 70% than the year before; sales in the secondary market increased 2.2 times, export deliveries - 2.4 times. "Nizhnekamskshina" delivers products to AvtoVAZ, "GM-AvtoVAZ", "Sollers", "Volkswagen Group Rus" and others.

Russian tire market fell by 12-15% the last year, says Mr.Burganov. According to him, this year due to the weakening of the ruble the price of tire production will grow by an average of 20-30%, and the consumption of tires will be reduced by 15-20%.

Last year, the domestic tire manufacturers as compared to 2013 reduced their production by 4.5% to 26.9 million units, according to the latest quarterly report "Nizhnekamskshina". The share of Nizhnekamsk Company in the IV quarter among domestic tire manufacturers fell by 3.6% compared with September-December of 2013 and it was 33%. During this period, the share of Russian tire plants within the group "Amtel-Vredestein" increased by 2.7% to 26.7%.

Raiffeisenbank analyst, Konstantin Yuminov, considers the plans of "Nizhnekamskshina" as optimistic. He predicts that a drop in sales in the market of new cars could reach 30%, and if "the economy does not improve fundamentally", the secondary car market will also slow down, on which it is implemented the pent-up demand and the money is still there.

Given the trends in the economy, consumers will buy less of tires of high price category and move to economy segment, where "Nizhnekamskshina" works, says Mr.Yuminov. Their main competitor - "Cordiant" had the expansion of capacity and they assess the market, by contrast, by pessimistic way, the expert knows.

Decision of "Nizhnekamskshina" to increase the production is logical, given the rise in prices of imported tires, but they should not expect a significant breakthrough, says the Director of Development of QB Finance, Margarita Gorsheneva. However, she believes that the company can regain the lost positions during the year, when it had 36% of the market.

IFC Markets analyst, Dmitry Lukashov, estimates the total (including import and production) consumption of passenger car tires in Russia in 50 million units per year. He believes that this year the domestic producers will have a chance to pick up the market share of foreign companies and to participate in the program of import substitution. Due to the increase of the dollar by 90% the imported tires can be more expensive by one and a half times, while Russian tires - by 20-25%, says Mr.Lukashov.