Rebuilding Petrochemicals: Iakov Goldovskiy’s Vision for Reviving Russia’s Industrial Giants

On December 26, 1991, the Soviet Union officially dissolved, leaving 15 newly independent countries in its wake. The collapse of the Soviet Union was a turning point, not just for history, but for businesses in its former industrial sector. Many businesses that were once part of the world’s second-largest economy found themselves blindsided by fragmented assets, broken supply chains, and decentralization. These were the challenges that entrepreneur Iakov Goldovskiy was facing as he founded the Vienna-based company Petrochemical Holding (PCH) in 1996 in the midst of a changing European market .

To the outside observer, the founding of PCH might have seemed like just another new business venture in Austria. Goldovskiy had been a permanent resident of Vienna since 1991, so it was reasonable to assume that he wanted to work closer to home. However, by founding PCH and its Russia-based subsidiary, ZAO Gazoneftekhimicheskaya Kompaniya (GNK), Goldovskiy laid the foundation for his eventual work with the Siberian-Ural Oil and Gas Chemical Company, also known as SIBUR, which would become Russia’s largest integrated gas and petrochemical conglomerate by the early 2000s. Through GNK, PCH would also play a crucial role in Goldovskiy’s plan to reintegrate the industrial chains disrupted after the USSR’s collapse by organizing supply chains, centralizing management, and restoring technological integration across multiple processing stages.

In the early 1990s, Goldovskiy had already founded several companies that organized international supply chains. In 1990, he co-founded the joint venture Columbus, which was a Soviet-Panamanian joint venture based in Moscow that worked in wholesale trade and imports of consumer goods and materials such as metals, wood, animal hides, oil, and gas. In 1992, he also founded the Austria-based company Rosetto GmbH. As part of a Russian-Kazakh intergovernmental program that took place from 1994-1997, Rosetto GmbH arranged processing of up to 5–6 million tons of crude oil at Kazakh refineries to domestic and export markets using fuel-for-grain barter logistics. During this period, he also cooperated with major companies in the Russian oil sector, including Roscontract and Rosneft. In 1992, Goldovskiy also established the plant TESTA as part of a joint venture with Rosetto GmbH as the majority stakeholder. TESTA would go on to become the largest producer of wooden pallets in Europe.

Through these ventures, Goldovskiy gained both experience in enterprise-level supply chain management and resources that he would invest into PCH and GNK’s activities. After these significant investments, GNK was able to acquire large stakes in key upstream assets in Russia. Over the next few years, GNK integrated new plants into a single vertically structured system covering all the processing stages from raw gas extraction to the final production of polymers, plastics, rubbers, and chemical fibers.

Goldovskiy’s efforts with PCH and GNK played a significant role in SIBUR’s company history after he acquired control of SIBUR by purchasing the state’s shares in the company through GNK in 1998. As the company’s president, Goldovskiy consolidated GNK’s gas and petrochemical assets into SIBUR, further developing the company’s infrastructure and paving the way for Goldovskiy’s plan to absorb gas-processing facilities across Western Siberia and the Urals into SIBUR’s Production and Technological Complex. By the early 2000s, SIBUR had become the largest petrochemical enterprise in Russia.

Iakov Goldovskiy’s work with PCH and GNK was significant not just for its role in the growth of SIBUR, the largest integrated petrochemicals company in Russia to date, but also because it provided a model for vertical integration for Eastern European industrial companies in a post-Soviet world. By unifying dispersed plants and restarting disrupted supply lines, Goldovskiy demonstrated how entrepreneurs can help contribute to their country’s economies after periods of industrial collapse.