Azerbaijan, Baku, Nov. 15 / Trend E. Kosolapova/
The joint Kazakh- French solar panel plant will be launched in Astana in December, Kazakh National Atomic Company Kazatomprom spokesman Kristina Podshivalova told Trend over phone on Thursday.
"December 16 is the independence day in our country. We will launch the plant to this date," Podshivalova said.
According to Podshivalova, the company will continue working on the project to bring the plant to the initial designed capacity in 2013.
Moreover in 2013 Kazatomprom plans to reach initial designed capacity at the Kazakh-Japanese plant of rare earth metals SARECO, which was launched in the city of Stepnogorsk on November 2, Podshivalova said.
The solar panels plant in Astana is aimed at developing solar energy and other renewable energy in Kazakhstan. The total cost of the project hit 34 billion tenge ($230.04 million). The solar panels will be produced on the basis of Kazakh silicon.
SARECO plant is designed to produce 1,500 tons of TREO (amount of rare earth metals oxides), with an increase in production capacity to 3,000 tons of TREO in 2015 and to 5,000-6,000 tons of TREO in 2017. A significant part of the production will fall to the so-called heavy rare earth group, the scarcest and demanded today. The main target market of SARECO is Japanese market.