OREANDA-NEWS. Imports of Chinese-made solid-rolled wheels to Russia since the start of supplies totaled 47.7 thousand units. This was during the round table "Development of the car-repair complex", organized by the publishing house "Gudok", said the head of the carriage facilities of the Central Directorate of Infrastructure "Russian Railways" Mikhail Sapetov. "47.7 thousand disks of production of factories of the Republic of China were accepted and shipped to the Russian Federation", he said.

Sapetov noted that the problem of the shortage of seamless-rolled wheels and, as a result, high prices for them should normalize in the first half of 2020. “And it’s also pleasing that Prommashkomplekt has finally started working on the territory of Kazakhstan, and according to our information, a little more than 5 thousand seamless-rolled wheels have already been shipped to Russia. That is, the obligations that Prommashkomplekt made to Russian customers, “Interpipe” doesn't lag behind, doesn't reduce the volume of deliveries to the territory of the Russian Federation, about 129 thousand wheels have already been left for the consumers of the Russian Federation”, Sapetov concluded.

At the same time, Russian companies expanded the capacity for the production of railway wheels. According to Sapetov, the United Metallurgical Company in 2019 increased the production of solid-rolled wheels by 100 thousand units, and Evraz NTMK - by 65 thousand.

An imbalance in supply and demand in the railway wheel market has been observed since 2017. In February, the Union of Railway Operators proposed to solve the problem by reducing import duties and increasing imports of products from Kazakhstan and the Czech Republic. At the end of August until June 1, 2020, the anti-dumping duty in the amount of 34.22% for railway wheels from Ukraine in the territory of the Eurasian Economic Union was suspended.