Uzbekistan, Tashkent, November 25 / Trend , D. Azizov /
Construction of an around $900 million alumina-cement plant in the Tashkent region is put off, a source with the Government of Uzbekistan told Trend on Friday.
Additional calculations have illustrated that implementation of the initial variant of the project is inexpedient so it has been decided to put off the works, the source noted. No details of the calculations are available.
The source continued to say that the Government plans to restart examining the issue in the first half of 2012 with respect to the new calculations and new starting date of construction works.
As reported before, joint-stock company Uzbekugol planned to build an alumina-cement plant on the basis of secondary kaolin reserves of the Tashkent region-based Angren brown coal mine - Uzbekugol's key raw material base - in 2011-2014.
As planned initially, the plant is to be specialized in the production of up to 500,000 tons of alumina and up to 7 million tons of high brand - M-700 and M-800 - cement per year.
Preconstruction feasibility study of the project was carried out by Russian joint-stock company RUSAL All-Russian Aluminum-Magnesium Institute, part of the group of companies RUSAL, the world's biggest aluminum producer.
There are no internal aluminum facilities in Uzbekistan.
According to Uzbekugol, explored and proven reserves of Angren mine's brown coal are 2.5 billion tons, kaolin clays are 900 million tons, including 428 million tons approved as raw material for the production of alumina and aluminum.
The necessity of construction of a secondary kaolin reserves-based alumina-cement plant is provided by the Coal Mining Industry Refurbishment Program for 2011-2015.