Currently the growing demand for special alumina cements and for alumina cement in particular, is noticed on the Russian market. In 2007-2011, demand for alumina cement in Russia increased by 22.4 %, i.e. from 22 thousand tons to 27 thousand tons. In 2008-2009, decrease in demand for alumina cement was registered. It was caused by large-scale building freeze amid the crisis. Moreover, most of the companies used less expensive types of alumina cement instead of alumina cement. In 2009, the wholesale price for alumina cement was more than four times higher than the average wholesale price for other alumina cement types and amounted to 17. 162, 3 rubles per ton.

Alumina cement is sold mostly on the domestic market in Russia.  In 2007-2011, share of the actual domestic sales in the demand pattern was fluctuated between 86 % in 2007 and 93 % in 2011. In 2007-2011, the export share of the demand volume fluctuated between 14 % in 2007 and 7 % in 2014. In 2007-2011, the volume of alumina cement exported from Russia went down from 3 thousand tons to 1.9 thousand tons, and equaled 37.5 %.

The largest exporters of alumina cement are Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. In 2011, the total share of these countries of the total export volume accounted for 84.6 %. In 2007-2011, the actual volume of alumina cement exported to Kazakhstan decreased by almost 30 %, i.e. from 1.082,5 tons to 759 tons, to Ukraine by 50.3 %, i.e. from 1, 196 tons to 595 tons. In 2008-2011, the volume of alumina cement exported to Uzbekistan went up by 5.8 %, i.e. from 240 tons to 254 tons.

The Russian cement market is connected directly with the situation in the construction industry of the country. The world financial crisis affected the construction market extremely negatively, and consequently, the cement industry. Between 2008 and 2010 the sales of cement in Russia went down by 14.5% compared to 2007, having fallen to 48.9 million tons in 2010.

Now the country is witnessing the improvement of the cement market. According to the estimates of BusinesStat, the sales of cement will have increased to 51.8 million tons by the end of 2011. In prospect, the sales of cement will continue growing, backed up by the programs which require a large volume of cement, i.e. housing and infrastructure construction, preparation for APEC 2012 summit, Winter Olympics in Sochi, development of the electric power industry.

In 2010, after the years of crisis, domestic producers started to raise the volume of production of cement. The growth of production during the next years will be backed by modernization of plants and development of new fields of cement raw materials. According to our estimates, the volume of production of cement will have reached 64.3 million tons by 2015.