ANGREN, Uzbekistan—Uzbekistan National Chemical has broken ground on an industrial complex in Angren that eventually will include plants for tires, conveyor belting and other rubber products, according to Chinese manufacturer and builder Poly Technologies Inc., which is providing turnkey engineering for the project.
When completed, the project will include a plant capable of producing 3 million steel radial automotive and 200,000 bias agricultural tires, along with 328,000 feet of conveyor belting annually, Poly Technologies said.
The parties put the value of the project at $184 million.
The Uzbekistan government has been evaluating the efficacy of this project since 2008 as a way to replace imported tires with domestically sourced products and expand exports to peripheral countries, according to Poly Technologies. The project reached a critical stage last December when Uzbek President Islam Karimov issued a presidential decree regarding the establishment of a rubber plant in Angren Special Industrial Zone.
Among those attending the recent ground-breaking ceremony were Ibragimov Gulomjon Inomovich, Uzbekistan deputy prime minister; Sun Lijie, Chinese ambassador to Uzbekistan; and Zhang Zhengao, China Poly Group general manager and Poly Technologies chairman.
The Uzbek government regards this project as a nationally strategic development that is being treated as a high priority project under highly favorable terms, Poly Technologies said, while all the parties involved view it as furthering the advancement of industrial cooperation between China and Uzbekistan.
In his speech at the ceremony, Inomovich said the project is expected to greatly improve the production capacity of Uzbekistan's rubber products.
Ambassador Lijie said that the Chinese embassy in Uzbekistan is considering China's Silk Road Economic Belt initiative as an opportunity to support Chinese firms that wish to invest in Uzbekistan.
Poly Technologies said it has been active in Uzbekistan for more than a decade. The firm said this project represents a major breakthrough for the company in the central Asian market that could lead to an expansion of its engineering business beyond China's borders.