A New Cotton Ginnery Begun Operations in The Southern Kazakhstani District

A new cotton ginnery ‘Uzyn-ata Mukta’ worth 900 million Tenge has begun operations in the Southern Kazakhstani district of Shardarinskiy.

The cotton processing plant was launched by borrowed funds from the state program ‘Business Road Map 2020’, under which 700 million Tenge were granted through a Eurasian bank for the construction of the ginnery which began in 2012, the rest of the investment was made by the company.

The ginnery has a capacity to process 40 to 45,000 tons of raw cotton, and is the only plant in the south of Kazakhstan where the full process would be functioning on natural gas, which significantly reduces the cost of production, said managing director of ‘Uzyn-ata Mukta’, Bahytzhan Tleuzhanov.

All other cotton ginneries in the country are functioning on liquefied natural gas (LNG) or gas imported from other countries, he added.

Mr. Tleuzhanov said once operating at full capacity, the ginnery, which currently employs 200 people, would be providing employment to more than 1000 people in the Shardarinskiy district of the southern part of the country.

Samples of cotton fibers produced at the plant, were sent to trading companies of the Russian Federation, China and the Ukraine, for examination and representatives of these companies have rated the quality of the processed cotton at the highest level, he added.

According to Mr. Tleuzhanov, the ginnery aims to procure at the very least 50,000 tons of cotton for processing during the next harvesting season, and the company has already signed contracts Russian, Chinese and European enterprises for supplying processed cotton.

South Kazakhstan is the only raw cotton growing region in the country, contributing around 40 percent of the region’s overall agricultural output. In 2012 harvest period, around 257,000 tons of raw cotton was collected from the region.