OREANDA-NEWS. April 10, 2008. China’s CFMC Engineering Co. is to modernize two cement plants of Uzbekistan: OSC “Bekobodsement” and OSC “Quvasoysement” worth around USD 90 million. The Uzbek cement manufacturers cannot keep their position in the market without complete technological revolution, reported the Official website www.investuzbekistan.uz.

The department of the JSC “O’zqurilishmateriallari” for Analysis and Development says that the Chinese company will modernize the current production of the “Bekobodsement”, launching a new line for manufacturing cement on a “dry” technology. Within the modernization the company intends to make the Uzbek plant’s capacity 850 thousand tons of cement clinker.

There will be constructed a new cement milling plant in the OSC “Quvasoysement” for processing clinker of the OSC “Bekobodsement”. The modernization will increase the plant’s capacity up to 1 million tons a year. The projects are to be implemented in 2008-2009.

The Uzbek cement manufacturers are intensively integrating energy-saving technologies into particular parts of their assembly lines. They basically reconstruct energy intensive technologies. Experts estimate that the integration of energy-saving technologies and equipments will economize 5%-10% of natural gas and electricity. 

At the same time, the modernization is to pass from “wet” water-in-use cement production to the “dry” one. The “dry” method is to dry raw components with preliminary mixing and burning them and “wet” technology is to burn wet mixture in furnaces. Different estimations show that “dry” cement production is economically as more efficient as 25%-30% than the “wet” one.

Here the capacity of a “dry” furnace is equal to that of three “wet” ones. At present the transition to the “dry” cement technology needs investment of around USD 50-100 million. It is quite possible to cover such capital inflows in four or five years, having high industrial efficiency of 110 percent.

Uzbekistan has developed a program on modernizing and reequipping construction material industries worth USD 343 million for 2007-2011. The country plans to invest more capital in cement modernization projects – USD 302,4 million, including direct foreign investments and loans of USD 145,6 million. It is predicted that the investment program will increase cement output 1,5 times in 2011 against that of 2006, up to 8,326 million tons.

The “O’zqurilishmateriallari” states that last year the local cement industry manufactured as more as 10% than that of 2006, more than 6 million tons. Main factors of increase in cement output were growing demand for cement in Uzbekistan and neighboring countries and investment attractiveness of the industry.

The investors intend to cover cement deficit by modernizing the cement industries in Uzbekistan and launching new ones. At the moment the republic is preparing for the construction of five new cement plants having total capacity of 8.5 million tons. Particularly, it plans to launch cement industries in Surkhandarya, Jizzakh, Kashkadarya and Tashkent regions and Republic of Karakalpakstan.