Territorial and Structural Shifts in the Russian Tire Industry

This paper examines the territorial dynamics and key aspects of the structural transformation of the Russian tire industry. The research dataset includes statistical data on tire production at the enterprise level, foreign trade data, business press materials, company reports, and thematic geographic and economic studies. The paper illustrates how the content and scale of the consumer factor in enterprise location changed from the district level to the national and macroregional levels. As the share of transportation costs in the shipment of tires decreased, the principle of enterprise placement focused on supplying districts gave way to the practice of locating enterprises in large urban agglomerations of European Russia. At the same time, the importance of preferential regimes for specific production sites increased. The macroregional territorial shifts that were typical of the Soviet period—from central regions to peripheral areas—have been replaced by reverse shifts toward the Central and Northwestern regions. Calculations of the redistribution coefficient and the location mobility index confirm the temporal heterogeneity of the industry’s territorial dynamics. The most intensive change in the territorial structure occurred from 2004 to 2012 against the backdrop of the closure of old production facilities and the placement of foreign companies’ enterprises. The study demonstrates a deepening specialization of tire industry enterprises based on the calculation of the weighted Ryabtsev and Herfindahl–Hirschman indices. The key patterns of organizational change in the industry have been identified. These include the high dynamism of organizational structure, the low stability of horizontal and vertical integration structures due to the small scale of the Russian market, and the peripheral role of the industry for petrochemical companies. Additionally, there is greater stability in global integration projects and large-scale, horizontally integrated structures. From the 2000s to the 2010s, the Russian tire industry developed an export orientation alongside a simultaneous increase in imports. In the context of the forced reduction of exports after 2022, the key task is to reorient production toward the domestic market and reduce the import dependence of the market, which is a prerequisite for restoring production volumes.

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