Henkel CEO Sees Russia No.4 Market in 4 Years

Henkel expects Russia to become its fourth-largest market over the next four years, a Russian business daily quoted its chief executive as saying in an interview published on Monday.

"We expect that already in the mid-term prospective markets like Russia will be showing faster growth than western Europe and the U.S.," Kasper Rorsted told Vedomosti newspaper.

Russia is currently Henkel's sixth or seventh-biggest market and the company plans to open a €10 million ($12.5 million) adhesives materials factory there in July and to build two more such plants by 2012, Rorsted was quoted as saying.

"I am sure that emerging markets will be out of the crisis sooner than developed (markets)," Rorsted said. Henkel, whose international rivals include Unilever, P&G and Colgate-Palmolive, earlier this month gave a cautious outlook for 2010, pointing to the Greek debt crisis and rising raw material costs.

Its Russian sales rose 12% in 2009 to €857.5 million against a 4% drop in total sales to around €14 billion.