Plastics Ukraine is a leading distributor of polymer materials for advertising, printing, interiors, construction, industry and packaging, and part of the international Plastics group with offices in Poland, Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia. ANIART built plastics.ua for the company: a B2B platform with a catalog of 6,000+ items where a professional buyer quickly finds the right material by category or by their own industry. Next, separate sites for Moldova and Georgia will launch on the same platform.
Context: this is B2B, not retail
The buyers on plastics.ua are businesses: advertising agencies and print shops, furniture makers, builders, industrial plants and packaging companies. They don't buy sheets, films, boards and profiles for themselves. They buy them as raw material for their own products. Such a customer arrives with a specific task, knows the technical requirements and compares specifications, not pictures.
How a B2B catalog differs from an online store
A retail store needs a photo, a price and a "buy" button. In B2B other things matter more: exact material specifications, breadth of range, related services (cutting, milling, regional delivery) and a clear path from choosing a material to paying the invoice. The site is a working tool for managers and customers, not a shop window.
The challenge
A distributor's range runs to thousands of items from about a hundred brands and dozens of suppliers. The same polycarbonate is needed by a sign maker, a farm and a builder, but each of them looks for it differently. We needed a catalog where:
- a professional finds a material by type (polycarbonate, PVC, acrylic, films, composite panels and so on);
- a customer who doesn't know the exact product name finds a solution through their industry;
- regional terms such as contacts and delivery adapt to the customer;
- payment and delivery terms and extra services are clear before the customer even contacts a manager;
- the architecture is ready to launch the group's other countries without rewriting the platform.
What we built
| Business need | Platform solution |
|---|---|
| A large range | A 6,000+ item catalog with a product-category tree and filters by specification |
| Customers from many industries | A second navigation axis of 70+ application areas, from outdoor advertising and furniture to medicine and food processing, with every product linked to several areas |
| Working with regions | Detecting the customer's region to show the matching terms and contacts, plus a Google Maps view of offices |
| B2B payments | Payment by bank transfer against an issued invoice, the B2B norm, with payment and delivery terms spelled out on the site |
| Service, not just product | An extra-services section for cutting, milling and delivery |
| A multilingual audience | Three languages (Ukrainian, English, Russian) with correct hreflang for search |
| Marketing and repeat sales | Promotions, news about new materials, an offers newsletter and end-to-end analytics |
Technology
The platform is built on Laravel (PHP) and MySQL. It runs behind Nginx and is deployed in Docker. The front end uses TypeScript and Sass, built with a Node toolchain. Integrations with accounting and external systems go through a REST API.
Back end
Laravel, PHP and MySQL, with a data model for products, categories, application areas and regions.
Infrastructure
Nginx and Docker give development and production the same environment and make deploys predictable.
Regions and maps
Detecting the customer's region, plus Google Maps for the map of offices and warehouses.
Analytics
GA4 and Google Tag Manager track demand by category, industry and region, plus ad performance.
What's next: Moldova and Georgia as separate sites
The next stage is launching separate sites for Moldova and Georgia on the same platform. These won't be a country switcher on plastics.ua but full local sites with their own domains, range, prices and local company terms.
| Why separate sites | What it gives |
|---|---|
| Local domains | Better search visibility in each country and more trust from local buyers |
| Own terms | Each legal entity's own prices, payment and delivery terms |
| Own range | The local warehouse's catalog and stock rather than the group-wide list |
| Shared core | One codebase and one development process, so a new feature reaches every site in the group |
The result
Plastics Ukraine now has a B2B platform where a professional buyer finds a material on their own, sees their region's terms and pays by bank transfer against an invoice. The company gets demand analytics by category and industry. The architecture is ready for the Moldovan and Georgian markets. We continue to support and develop the platform.
Running a B2B range of thousands of items or planning to enter new markets? Browse our other projects or get in touch.
