ASTANA – Kazakh Prime Minister Alikhan Smailov visited a large trading-logistics center and major industrial facilities, including a lead processing plant, pharmaceutical enterprise, oil refinery, and aluminum can production plant on Jan. 27 as part of his working trip to Shymkent, reported the Prime Minister’s press office.
Prime Minister Smailov during his working visit in Shymkent on Jan. 27. Photo credit: Prime Minister’s press service. Click to see the map in full size.
“The center’s expansion will allow Shymkent to become a transport and logistics hub in Central Asia. This will have a positive impact on the development of the country’s economy as a whole,” said Smailov during the visit to one of the country’s three largest cities.
Touring the modern multifunctional trading logistics center, which provides storage services, Smailov announced a decision to expand the center’s territory by another 136 hectares to ensure further rapid development. This measure will help stabilize the prices of essential food items.
The Standard Steel KZ plant for processing lead production waste to produce non-ferrous metal concentrate manufactures more than 4,600 tonnes of copper-silver concentrate per year. After the planned expansion, the plant will produce 20,900 more tonnes of zinc oxide annually. According to Smailov, this nationally significant project is set to reduce the environmental impact of industrial enterprises.
On a visit to another plant, Smailov reiterated President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s instructions to increase the share of domestic production in the pharmaceutical industry to 50 percent by 2025. The Kazakh government will review support measures to facilitate the development of the country’s pharmaceutical cluster. In 2023, Polish Polpharma company which owns the historic Chimpham plant under the brand of Santo, plans to invest nearly $8.4 million in the Chimpharm, which produces more than 130 medicines.
PetroKazakhstan Oil Products, which was modernized and reconstructed in 2018, produces different types of gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, liquefied gas, fuel oil, and other oil products for the domestic market.
Considering the growing market needs, the capacity of the Shymkent refinery will be expanded from 6 to 9 million tonnes per year, Smailov said.
The QazALPack aluminum can production plant, capable of manufacturing around 500 million products per year, was launched in October 2022. According to Smailov, the facility is a unique project in Central Asia, and it needs to expand production volumes for its extensive and promising export market.
