SHYMKENT – The country’s first polypropylene sheet and plastic product factory has opened in Shymkent.
“Our new innovative factory has broad sheet material production capabilities,” director of SouthRegionPlast Mikhail Fedosov said.
Modular floating platforms assembled at the plant, which can serve as passages across rivers, leisure floats, piers or jetties are able to withstand water at up to 3-5 points. The pontoons are made from high density polyethylene and the weight of each pontoon is only 6 kg.
Platforms with such a long service life are extremely durable, their colour does not fade in the sun, they can withstand extreme temperatures and are environmentally friendly. The platforms are assembled from 4 pontoons and have a support weight of up to 350 kg. One can even float a house on them.
The first order came from Kyrgyzstan. The plant currently is working on an order from Aktau. An oil company intends to use one of the devices as a floating repair facility. The production capacity of the plant is 200 pontoons.
Solid propylene sheets are also in great demand in the chemical, petrochemical, metallurgical, electronic and radio industries because of their resistance to harsh environments. They are able to replace metal containers, which cost several times more. Propylene sheets are also very useful when building fish farms. Plastic is easily sawed, drilled, planed and cut manually. Sheets can be connected quickly with welding.
The project costs 336 million tenge (US$2.2 million), of that amount, 144 million tenge ($US935,000) were obtained from the Business Road Map 2020 programme, which is part of the State Programme of Accelerated Industrial and Innovative Development (SPAIID). In addition, the plant was built in the Shymkent Industrial Zone, which afforded the project use of its existing engineering infrastructure.
The capacity of the plant allows production of 124,800 square metres of propylene products a year, including pontoons and propylene sheets, plastic window and cabinet parts, consumer goods, boxes and pallets for vegetable production. The enterprise employs fifty workers who trained at Russian enterprises.
SouthRegionPlast became one of the most successful projects of the Industrialisation Road Map. There are 150 projects totalling 447.9 billion tenge (US$3 billion) in the South Kazakhstan region. In total, these factories will create more than 19,000 jobs. Today, 66 projects worth 109.2 billion tenge (US$709 million) have already been implemented. Currently, in the industrial zone, there are 32 enterprises. More than 44 billion tenge (US$286 million) of investments have been made in the strategic vision. Such industrial zones exist in all districts and towns of the region and were built to create favourable investment conditions.
The emphasis is on the development of small and medium-sized businesses reliant upon innovative technologies. The rate of industrialisation in the region is high. Last year, the gross domestic product in the South Kazakhstan Oblast was 1.8 trillion tenge (US$11.7 billion). It is assumed that by the end of this year, it will exceed 2 trillion (US$13 billion) tenge.
