Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Nov. 17
By Demir Azizov - Trend:
Uzbekistan's state joint-stock company Uzhimprom and China's Poly Technologies Inc. signed a contract to build a tire plant in Uzbekistan worth about $190 million, the Uzbek company told Trend Nov. 17.
The contract, signed following direct negotiations, stipulates turnkey construction of the facility's technological part by the Poly Technologies Inc.
It was previously reported that in December 2013, the Uzhimprom announced a tender for turnkey construction of a factory for producing three million tires, 200,000 agricultural tires and 100,000 linear meters of conveyor belt for cleaning equipment per year at the Rezinotekhnika OJSC in the city of Angren in the country's Tashkent region.
In 2014, the tender was abandoned; however the reasons were not specified.
The construction, worth a total of $230 million, is planned to be financed with the help of foreign loans, a loan from the Fund for Reconstruction and Development of Uzbekistan (FRDU) and Uzkhimprom's own funds.
In September 2011, the Uzhimprom signed a contract with China's Citic Pacific Ltd. (Citic) to build a $155 million worth rubber products plant in Uzbekistan.
The plant was planned to be built at the Rezinotekhnika OJSC.
Subsequently, the Uzbek side waived the contract due to the changes in the terms of the project and its technical parameters.
Uzbekistan doesn't manufacture tires, and fully imports them particularly from Russia and China.
The Rezinotekhnika OJSC, before the collapse of the USSR, was the largest producer of rubber products in the country.
Its design capacity was 120,000 tires for cars and trailers, nine million pairs of special rubber shoes, 600,000 square meters of rubberized fabric and 1,000 metric tons of commercial rubber per year.
Due to a sharp decline in the supply of raw materials, purchased from Russia, the capacities of the enterprises have in recent years been running at less than 10 percent.