NUR-SULTAN – Kazakhstan will launch a new plant to produce Yutong Chinese passenger buses in December in Saran, the Karaganda Region, the Kazakh Ministry of Industry and Infrastructural Development press service said. The plant will produce approximately 1,200 buses per year.
Yutong buses partially manufactured at SaryarkaAvtoProm national company. Click to view the map. Photo credit: Ministry of Industry and Infrastructural Development.
“At the first stage, this will significantly influence the situation with the worn-out state of public transport in Kazakhstan,” the statement reads.
According to analysts, Kazakhstan has 12,505 buses in total, “more than half of which are critically obsolete.”
Kostanai based QazTehna Kazakh company and Saryarka Kazakh social-entrepreneurial corporation and Yutong company created a joint venture to implement the investment project. Investment into the project totalled $37.7 million.
Yutong is the world’s largest supplier of passenger vehicles. The company holds 15 percent of the global segment market share and 37 percent of the Chinese market share. Yutong annually sells 70,000 buses, and 25,000 new electric buses.
In addition to this, the Saran plant will produce road-building and freight vehicles to accommodate the demand on roads from industrial and mining companies in Kazakhstan. The plant’s production capacity is able to satisfy current demand. The Saran plant will produce approximately 400 units of the vehicles per year.
The enterprise will use the building of a former factory of rubber products. The renovation of the plant will revive Saran’s currently inoperative industrial zone. The launch of the project should create 600 new jobs on the territory of the industrial zone.
The Karaganda plant will also export the vehicles to Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Iran and Pakistan, among other countries.
Earlier in 2020, Nur-Sultan Akimat (city administration) purchased 100 electric buses from the joint venture of the Yutong and SaryarkaAvtoProm national company. SaryarkaAvtoProm has been manufacturing 27 to 32 percent of each bus, including the electric motor, suspension parts and interior parts.
