Business news

MINSK, 8 May (BelTA) – The construction of the Amkodor-Mash factory has begun in the town of Kolodishchi, Minsk District. A ceremony to place a time capsule into the foundation of the future enterprise took place on 8 May, BelTA has learned.

The Amkodor-Mash factory will make frontal and universal loaders with the lifting capacity of 2-5 tonnes, telescopic-boom loaders, and articulated-chassis tractors with the engines ranging from 250hp to 600hp. The new factory will also make kits to assemble machines at other enterprises of the Belarusian mechanical engineering industrial group Amkodor. The project to build the loader factory is supposed to cost about $230 million. The factory is designed to make about 6,000 vehicles per annum. The factory will consist of a procurement department, a welding department, a machining department. The factory will machine welded components and parts, prepare them for painting, assemble them, and perform quality assurance tests before storing the final products.

Alexander Shakutin, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the public joint-stock company (OAO) Amkodor, the managing company of the holding company, noted that there are plans to commission the loader factory within 1.5-2 years. Eleven vehicles the factory will make have already been designed. Another 20 models and modifications will be made before the factory is commissioned. The factory will make exclusive products, which will be mainly exported to the European Union, Asia, Africa, and the former Soviet Union. Alexander Shakutin said he was confident that the new enterprise will be a hallmark of Belarus-China mutually beneficial cooperation.

CITIC Construction, a daughter company of CITIC Group Corporation, one of China’s largest state-run investment companies, is the general contractor for building the factory. CITIC Group President Wang Jiong underlined that the construction of the factory will be a shining example of Belarus-China cooperation and will open new pages in the history of Chinese-Belarusian friendship.

Advanced environmental protection solutions will be used in the course of the project. The National Center for Hygiene, Epidemiology, and Public Health has evaluated how pollutants in the atmospheric air can affect the local population. A radiation survey of the site has been carried out as well. Environmental safety has been confirmed by positive conclusions of environmental experts and state sanitary and hygiene experts about the sanitary protection zone project and the population health deterioration risk report.

The project provides for creating 1,350 jobs. There are plans to build a five-story apartment house this year for workers of the future enterprise.

Taking part in the groundbreaking ceremony were First Deputy Prime Minister of Belarus Vasily Matyushevsky, Belarus President Aide Alexander Kosinets, Belarus President Aide for Minsk Oblast Igor Yevseyev, Chairman of the State Property Committee Andrei Gayev, Minsk Oblast Governor Anatoly Isachenko, Ambassador of China to Belarus Cui Qiming, and other persons.

The industrial group Amkodor comprises 29 enterprises, including 19 factories that make over 120 models and modifications of machines and vehicles for agribusiness, road construction, utilities industry, forestry industry, production sector, and logistics.